What a wonderful refreshing evening with intelligent people and ideas!
THE PRESCIENCE OF KAREL CAPEK
A talk by Thomas Ort, PhD, Queens College/CUNY
March 6, 2025, at Bohemian National Hall
This year, on the 135th anniversary of his birth, we will be celebrating the genius of Karel Capek and reconsidering the relevance of his work today.
Thank you, Thomas ORT, for your erudite yet entertaining talk reminding us about the genius of this early twentieth-century Czech writer and the uncanny relevance of his work for our times’ political and technological developments. His fears about the displacement of human labor by machines and the threat of authoritarianism appear closer to their realization than ever since the 1930s.
Moderated by Professor Chris Harwood, Columbia University
Stand by for the recording on out YouTube Channel.
THOMAS ORT is Associate Professor of modern European history at Queens College, The City University of New York. The main focus of his research has been modernist and avant-garde life in early twentieth-century Czechoslovakia, but his most recent work concerns the politics of memory in postwar Eastern Europe. He is the author of Art and Life in Modernist Prague: Karel Capek and his Generation, 1911-1938 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), which was subsequently translated into Czech (Argo, 2016). Prof. Ort’s new book project, Meaning, Memory, and the Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, explores the ever-evolving interpretations of the killing of Reinhard Heydrich, the SS general and architect of the Final Solution, who was assassinated in Prague in 1942.
We recommend Thomas Ort’s book “Art and Life in Modernist Prague: Karel Capek and his Generation“, 1911-1938 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
KAREL CAPEK (1890–1938), a renowned Czech writer, playwright, critic, journalist, and friend of the first Czechoslovak president TG Masaryk, has been compared to writers like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. His notable works include the novels “War with the Newts” and “Krakatit”, and plays such as “The White Plague”, “The Makropulos Case”, “The Insect Play”, and “R.U.R.” (Rossum’s Universal Robots), which introduced the term “robot” to the world. Capek’s writing spanned multiple genres, from drama and fiction to essays, travel writing, reflections on gardening and enchanting stories for children. He was a master of language and storytelling, elevating Czech literature on the global stage.
Czechoslovak American Marionette Theater at 
Tuesday, November 8 at 7PM
Sylva Pavlasová studied Egyptology and Prehistoric and Early Historic Archaeology at Charles University in Prague. As a curator of the Egyptology Department of the Náprstek Ethnic History Museum in Prague, she produced several exhibitions on Ancient Egypt, including a special exhibition for the blind which was also shown in Slovakia, Egypt, Australia and the United States. She served as cultural attaché in Egypt (1999- 2003), deputy chief of mission and chargé d´affaires at the Czech Embassy in Lebanon (2003-2006), a specialist at Middle East Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affaires in Prague (2006-2009).
