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Host Institution

In its dual capacity as proponent and host institution of this IP, Charles University in Prague (Univerzita Karlova v Praze), through its Faculty of Arts (Filozofická fakulta), will take responsibility for the programme’s logistics and give its particular contribution to the course’s academic programme:

Logistics: the Faculty of Arts will provide adequate spaces and facilities for the study and teaching activities in the programme to be fully carried out in the course of its two weeks. This will include adequately equipped lecture and seminar rooms, full access to the Faculty’s libraries (covering both its conventional and electronic resources), and full inter and intranet access. Discharge of its organisational duties on the part of the Faculty of Arts will also include, prior to the course, providing assistance in securing adequate accommodation for staff and students; and, during the course, securing administrative support.
Academic Role: as proponent of this programme, the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures of the Faculty of Arts will actively contribute towards its full academic realisation, and will do so in ways that reflect its own experience in the IP’s specific field. Indeed, over its more than century-long history the Department has considerable experience teaching programmes based on Shakespeare and early modern literature. Among the former Department Heads, there are leading international Shakespeareans, Professor Zdeněk Stříbrný, D.Litt., and Professor Martin Hilský, MBE, the author of the first complete translation and annotated critical edition of Shakespeare’s work in Czech. In 2011 the Department organized the Ninth World Shakespeare Congress.

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Charles University in Prague

was founded in 1348 and is one of the world’s oldest universities. more

Today it has seventeen faculties (fourteen in Prague, two in Hradec Králové and one in Plzeň), three university institutes and six centres for educational, scientific, research, development and other activities or for provision of information services. The university has more than 7,500 employees, 4,000 of these being academic and research staff. Over 51,000 students are studying at Charles University (which is roughly a sixth of all students in the Czech Republic), in more than 300 degree programmes and 660 study disciplines. More than 18,000 are studying in bachelor’s programmes, 25,000 in master’s programmes and more than 7,000 in doctoral programmes. Over 6,000 students are from abroad.

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The Faculty of Arts

is a traditional centre of Czech scholarship. more

Its prestige is based on an unrivalled number of disciplines (almost 90), on the depth and intensity of study and on its selective character, documented by the fact that thousands of prospective students apply for study at this Faculty every year. Almost 7000 students studied at the Faculty of Arts in 2008. Many former students have become leading personalities in the social life of the Czech Republic. The Faculty of Arts is the only school in Europe at which all the languages spoken in the Member States of the European Union can be studied. Thanks to its seven hundred leading teachers and researchers, the Faculty of Arts is the most important Czech higher education institution in the humanities.

The institution was established as the Faculty of Liberal Arts on the basis of the founding document of Charles IV of 7 April 1348. In doing so, the monarch strove to make the Kingdom of Bohemia an important centre of the Holy Roman Empire. Because it was the custom to first attend the Faculty of Liberal Arts, where students were educated chiefly in rhetoric and philosophy, the faculty became the University’s largest part and in 1366 it was endowed with the first college building, the Karolinum.

As a whole, the Faculty of Arts is extensively involved in trans-national co-operation, mostly within the Life Long Learning programmes. It participates in two Erasmus Mundus programmes, one of which, the Joint Doctorate TEEME (Text and Event in Early Modern Europe) is implemented by the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, in cooperation with the Department of World History. The international character of the Faculty of Arts confirmed by the breadth of its institutional contract, covering exchanges with every country in the EU and the diversity of its academic fields: Philology, including a wide range of Oriental Studies, History, Art History, Archaeology (especially of Ancient Egypt), Philosophy, Religion Studies, Informatics, New Media, Sociology, Pedagogy and Psychology.

English Studies at Charles University

The beginnings of English Studies can be traced back to the division of Charles University into the Czech and the German parts in 1882. more

However, elective courses of English language were taught since 1826 and in 1861 English became a regular part of the curriculum. The Chair of English Studies was established in 1912. Since that time Prague English Studies has become well-known for the school of Prague Structuralism. The eminent members of the department include Vilém Mathesius, the founder of the Prague Linguistic Circle, René Wellek, an internationally renowned literary theorist and comparative literature scholar and, as a visiting professor, F.O.Matthiessen, a leading historian of American literature. Among recent guest speakers at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures there are Wolfgang Iser, J. Hillis Miller, Sacvan Bercovitch, Derek Attridge, Robert Young, Carlo Ginzburg, Roy Foster, Jerome McGann, Aleks Sierz, Christopher Innes, Elisabeth Archibald, Joep Leerssen, Margaret Kelleher, Patricia Coughlan, Claire Connolly, Michael Cronin, David Cowart, Hugh J. Silverman, Michael Roudané and Aleida Assmann.