Magazine created by students of the Department of English and American Studies at Masaryk University.

Monthly archive

December 2018

Greetings from Central Pennsylvania

in Other

By Anna Mária Pisoňová

Picture courtesy of Lee Junsu.

The United States has never been on my bucket list. I have never dreamed about visiting the country of President Trump, eating hamburgers, or living the American dream. I happen to be here, because of an email from Dr. Tomkova that we all got last year in December in which she presented a last-minute offer to study abroad for a semester. There were no motivational letters and no interviews needed, just a genuine interest to go. It took me a thirty-minute-long googling of Juniata College, its location and options, to make a decision. Hasty? Irresponsible? Undigested? Definitely. But so far also one of the best decisions of my life. Keep Reading

Ponti: On Female Strengths and Burdensome Social Roles

in Reviews
The cover of Ponti published by Simon & Schuster, photo credit: Simon & Schuster. Picture courtesy of Sharlene Teo.

By Sandra Hrášková

Sharlene Teo is a Singaporean novelist based in the United Kingdom whose fictional pieces have appeared in publications such as Esquire UK, Magma Poetry, and Eunoia Review.  She has an LLB in Law from the University of Warwick and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she is currently completing her PhD in Creative and Critical Writing. Aside from being the recipient of the 2013 David T.K. Wong Creative Writing Fellowship and the 2014 Sozopol Fiction Fellowship, Teo is the winner of the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award for her debut novel Ponti. Keep Reading

Stoker: A Tale of Female Maturescence with a Tinge of Hitchcock

in Reviews

By Sandra Hrášková

Park Chan-wook, Marie Claire Korea, YouTube, CC BY 4.0.

 

Stoker, a 2013 psychological thriller drama film, is the English-language debut of South Korean film director, screenwriter and producer Park Chan-wook. The narrative depicts the unsettling coming of age story of a young woman repressed by her dysfunctional family. Chan-wook is praised as one of the most renowned and favoured filmmakers in South Korea and has also been gradually gaining popularity worldwide. In interviews, he lists both Western and Asian filmmakers as his figures of influence, for instance the Korean producer Ki-duk Kim and the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. As Kurt Osenlund discovered when interviewing Chan-wook, Stoker was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of Doubt.

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Report from the 14th ESSE Conference

in Interviews/Other

By Patrícia Iliašová

 

Anne Fogarty’s plenary lecture in Scala. Photo credit: Eva Růžičková.

At the end of August 2018, Brno welcomed around 660 delegates from 55 different countries to the 14th ESSE Conference which ran from 29 August to 2 September. The conference was organized by the Czech Association for the Study of English (CZASE) and the Department of English and American Studies (DEAS), Masaryk University. The conference took place in several venues scattered across the city centre, and consisted of over 60 seminars, 18 parallel lectures, 4 plenary lectures, workshops and a rich cultural programme. Re:Views was fortunate enough to take part in some of the preparations and to have attended some of the sessions. However, to give you an overall insight into the conference, we asked the chair of the Organising Committee, Ivona Schöfrová to answer some questions about the preparations and the conference itself. Keep Reading

“Let Them Love Language”: Interview with Poet Rachel Plummer

in Interviews

By Tereza Walsbergerová

Rachel’s lecture on LGBT children’s literature. Photo credit: English Students’ Club.

 

“The secret me is a boy. / He takes girlness off like a sealskin: / something that never sat right on his shoulders.” Those are the first three lines of the poem “Selkie” by Scottish poet Rachel Plummer who was recently commissioned by LGBT Youth Scotland to write a collection of children’s poems based around LGBT retellings of traditional Scottish myths and stories. In Spring 2018, Rachel accepted ESCape’s invitation to visit our department. She presented a lecture titled Seeing Ourselves: LGBT Representation in Children’s Literature, ran two creative writing workshops, and helped me announce the winners of KAA’s Creative Writing Contest (which she also helped judge for a second time in a row). Although she has been really busy moving into her new house and publishing her book, I have managed to conduct a short e-mail interview with her. Amongst the topics we touched on are her personal and artistic relationship with England and Scotland, Brexit, home education, the role of literature in children’s development, and the canonicity of LGBT literature. Keep Reading

Miranda July: It’s Kind of a Wild Time

in Views

By Patricija Fašalek

About two years ago I met an American who told me I bear a resemblance to Miranda July. At that time I did not know who she was so I asked him about her, thinking her label would be something like: a writer, a filmmaker, a politician etc. He seemed quite surprised by my lack of knowledge about the woman in question, and he quickly went on: “She’s a feminist artist”.

I started to wonder, what does it mean to be a “feminist artist” in our age? Does this imply that they have to call out gender issues in their work? Does not mentioning gender issues make other female (or male) authors non-feminist? Do they have to be some kind of a spokespeople for women’s rights in the media? Is it about the female representation in their work? What the guy probably meant was “she’s a feminist and an artist”. But usually people would just say “she’s an artist”, unless a person is known for their activism. So who is Miranda July?

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Breaking Through Into the Light: Junot Díaz and His Way to the Minds of the Masses

in Views

By Anna Rybníčková

The urge to be heard is an old struggle, especially for minorities. With the rise of the importance of cinema, contemporary TV and producers such as Netflix or HBO, a necessary space has been provided for people of various ethnicities to be heard and seen. And yet, how many classic Hollywood movies can you name which portray Black, Hispanic, Asian or a gay person as the main character? Black Panther is a notable exception. But why is that the case, when 12.4% of the US population is black (that is 39 million people) and the Hispanic community is even larger – 17.6%, (over 55 million people)? This article focuses on those 55 million and tries to explore the impact one of its literary representatives – Junot Díaz, has had on the Latino community and on the US population in general. Keep Reading

Aggie for a Year: Yet Another Letter from Texas

in Other

By Tereza Walsbergerová

Me and my CEFT guardian angel Lynette in front of the Kyle Field football stadium before my very first Aggie football game.

 

Dear reader,

I thought that since this is supposed to be a letter, I would treat it as one and address y’all properly. I have only been in College Station for a couple of months and it feels like I have been here for years. Yet – even though I have been burned by the Texan sun, soaked through by the Texan rain, licked by Texan dogs, fed Texan kolaches, and learned Texan slang… I do not believe I will ever stop feeling strange about being on a different continent, almost 9.000 kilometers away from Brno. Let me start from the beginning, though; who am I and what am I doing in Texas? My name is Tereza and I am currently in the PhD program (Literatures in English) at the Department of English and American Studies, MUNI. I have been given the opportunity to relocate to Texas for a year and attend the MA in English program at Texas A&M through the William J. Hlavinka Fellowship at Texas A&M University in order to experience American culture and interact with the local Czech Texan community.

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