Leap into The Joke
Please join us for a series of events exploring the work of Milan Kundera (1929-2023), the Czech writer whose books became an international phenomenon. During the Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia, Kundera reminded the world of his native country’s central place in European culture. His formative influences included the composer Leoš Janáček and that modern myth-maker, Franz Kafka.
Robert Cremins and Dan Price from the Honors College at the University of Houston will lead us in a discussion of The Joke, one of the seeds of the Prague Spring. Kája Lill from the University of St. Thomas-Houston will present briefly on Moravian Musicology. In subsequent months we will meet to consider two other novels: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a best-seller that became a popular film; and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which back in late 1980 The New York Times called “the most original book of the season.”
Visit Brazos Bookstore to order your copy of Kundera’s novel.
Time and location
Thursday, February 29, 2024, at 7:00 PM
Czech Center Museum Houston
4920 San Jacinto St.
Houston, Texas, 77004
tickets
This event is FREE and open to the public.
partner
Leap into The Joke and bring your favorite quote!
RSVP below and write to us a quote or passage that particularly resonates with you from the reading. We will discuss some of your submissions at the next book club meeting.
If you have any further questions, please email social@czechcenter.org
Robert Cremins is a Senior Lecturer in the Honors College at the University of Houston, where he also directs Creative Work: A Pre-Professional Program. He is the author of the novels A Sort of Homecoming and Send in the Devils. His short fiction has appeared in Critical Quarterly, The Dublin Review, and been broadcast on BBC Radio.
Dan Price has taught at the University of Houston's Honors College since 2000. He has a PhD in Philosophy, specializing in French and German Aesthetics and Ethics. After several books on the intersection of ethics, community, and art, he has spent the last decade working toward practical applications of philosophy. He directs both the Community Health Worker Initiative and the Data & Society Program at the Honors College. They collect and analyze data from front-line health workers in disadvantaged communities around the Houston area, creating innovative programs for undergraduates to work side by side with community members to address a wide range of health problems.
Kája Lill is an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of St. Thomas-Houston, where he teaches music theory and conducts the UST Orchestra. He is a doctoral candidate in music theory and Rackham Merit fellow in the Rackham Graduate School at University of Michigan, where he is also pursuing an M.A. in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies. Lill’s research interests include the history of music theory in Central Europe and theories of rhythm and meter. His dissertation examines how the reception of Hugo Riemann’s Funktionslehre in the Czech lands can inform our understanding of harmonic function both in Riemann’s work and in current music theory.