Notes on Contributors
Martina Bařinová is pursuing her Ph.D. in Romance literatures at Palacky University (Olomouc, Czech Republic). Her research interests include the reflection of globalization and diaspora in contemporary Central American and Caribbean literature, especially works by women authors. She earned her master’s degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a thesis on the early development of rock music in Nicaragua in the context of political transition in the first decades of the 21st century. She contributed a chapter in the anthology Rock en contexto. El inicio del rock en Centroamérica en 1970–1980 and regularly posts commentary on the book review blog
Eva Batličková teaches Brazilian History and Literature at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of São Paulo (USP). One of her research focuses is on the philosophy of language of the Brazilian Czech-born writer and journalist Vilém Flusser. She is the author of A época brasileira de Vilém Flusser (2010) and Saul de Vilém Flusser: diálogo e subversão (2019). Since 2015 she has been a member of the editorial board of the international academic e-journal Flusser Studies.
José Luis Bellón Aguilera is a Senior Lecturer in History and Criticism of Spanish literature at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). He holds a degree in Classics (Granada) and a Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies (Birmingham). As a Hispanist, his field of study focuses on the history of Spanish literature. As a Hellenist, he has worked on the reception of Athenian democracy in Spain. He has published books on Juan Marsé (Ostrava, 2009) and on Miguel Espinosa (Granada, 2012), as well as a study and translation of Pseudo-Xenophon (Seville, 2017). José Luis is the author of numerous specialized articles, and he is currently working on a book about Juan Carlos Rodríguez and the theory of the “ideological unconscious.”
Zuzana Burianová is an Assistant Professor at Palacký University (Olomouc, Czech Republic). She earned her Ph.D. in Romance literatures (Charles University, Prague, 2004) with a dissertation on the concept of time in João Guimarães Rosa’s short story collection Primeiras Estórias. Her specialization lies in modern and contemporary Brazilian literature, history and culture. She has recently undertaken a project focused on Brazilian fiction depicting the period of the military dictatorship. Within this project, she has authored two Czech books and numerous articles in Portuguese which have been published in literary journals.
Petr Dytrt is an Associate Professor who lectures on modern and contemporary French literature at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). His research focuses on contemporary novels, which he examines through the prism of concepts of modernity. His doctoral thesis was devoted to Jean Echenoz and postmodernity. In 2012, he edited a special issue of the journal Études romanes de Brno dedicated to the imprint of twentieth-century history on the contemporary French-language novel. His second book, which traces the transition from solid modernity to a different kind of modernity, was published in 2014 and is entitled La Modernité en questions. La modernité liquide dans les romans de Jean Rouaud et François Bon. His research also focuses on the relationship between contemporary history and the novel.
Milena Fučíková is an Assistant Professor in French Literature and Francophone Postocolonal Studies at Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic). She is the author of Patrick Chamoiseau, le chant d’ombre et de lumière (2023), Pouvoir tout raconter. Poétique de la narration et métaphore comme outil narratif dans les romans de Patrick Chamoiseau et Johannes Bobrowski (2010). She has published studies in American Francophone Literature: Martinique, Haiti. She has also translated works by Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean-Claude Izzo, Laurent Gaudé, Isabelle Artus, and Lucie Lomová.
Marta Hudousková is a Ph.D. candidate at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). She received a Fulbright scholarship and was a visiting scholar at the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia between 2019 and 2020. Her research area is contemporary Cuban and Cuban-American women’s fiction. She teaches at the University of Life Sciences in Prague.
Caroline Ivanski Langer holds a bachelor’s degree in History from the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (Brazil). She is currently enrolled in the master’s program in History at the Federal University of Paraná.
Míla Janišová teaches French literature at Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic). She is currently completing her doctoral thesis in the field of Maghrebian literature written in French. Other research specializations of hers include French literature on migration, exile and cultural and social differences, all with an emphasis on writing the Self.
Petr Kyloušek is a Professor of Romance Literatures at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). He has published, co-published and edited monographs and articles, mainly on French and Quebec literatures, including Le Roman mythologique de Michel Tournier (2004), History of French-Canadian and Quebec Literature (2005), Imaginaire du roman québécois contemporain (2006), Us-them-me: the search for identity in Canadian literature and film / Nous-eux-moi: la quête de l’identité dans la littérature et le cinéma canadiens (2009), Milan Kundera, aneb, Co zmůže literatura (2012), Fin de l’art? Noétique de la littérature (2022), Milan Kundera, ou le voyage de la périphérie au centre de la littérature mondiale (2023).
Eva Lalkovičová works at Masaryk University (Brno), where she teaches and researches Latin American literature and conducts translation seminars. In her dissertation, Invocando fantasmas. Campo literario y “literatura mundial” en la novela argentina contemporánea, dos estudios de caso (el gaucho de Gabriela Cabezón Cámara y el terror de Mariana Enriquez), she examined the work of contemporary Argentine women novelists through the lens of the sociology of literature, as well as the transformations of the Argentine literary field along with dynamics influencing the penetration of peripheral literatures into world literature.
Chiara Mengozzi is an Assistant Professor at Charles University (Prague), where she teaches literary theory as well as contemporary Italian literature. She is also an associated researcher at CEFRES in Prague (French Research Center in the Social Sciences), and co-president of OFFRES (Organisation Francophone pour la Formation et la Recherche Européennes en Sciences Humaines). Her research focuses on world literature, postcolonial and migrant literatures, as well as ecocriticism. Her publications include: Narrazioni contese. Vent’anni di scritture italiane della migrazione (Carocci, 2013), Outside the Anthropological Machine. Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies (Routledge, 2020), and Storie condivise nell’Italia contemporanea. Narrazioni e performance transculturali (Carocci, 2022), co-edited with Daniele Comberiati.
Markéta Riebová is an Assistant Professor at Palacký University (Olomouc, Czech Republic). She holds a Ph.D. from Charles University, and has conducted research at Universidad Veracruzana (Mexico) and the University of California at Los Angeles. Her specialization is Mexican and Chicano/a literature and border studies. Her books include Retos de representación. Imagen de la sociedad mexicana en la obra ensayística de Octavio Paz y Carlos Monsiváis (Verbum, 2020). She has published essays in journals such as Anuario de Estudios Americanos, INTI. Revista de Literatura Hispánica, La palabra y el hombre, Verbum–Analecta neolatina, Svět literatury, Host.
Daniel Paul Sampey teaches at the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Tomas Bata University (Zlín, Czech Republic). His research interests include early 20th-century US drama, media and culture as well as English Language Teaching methodology. Since 2008, he has also worked in various contexts as a translator and editor of academic, scientific and creative texts. Although he has lived in the Czech Republic for more than 20 years, his family background on both his mother’s and father’s side is 100 % Louisiana French.
Vojtěch Šarše teaches Francophone Sub-Saharan Literatures, Postcolonial Theories and African Colonial History at Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic). He holds a Ph.D. in Romance literature (Charles University). As a researcher in anticolonial novels and identities as influenced by French colonial politics of assimilation, he has edited three books related to these themes. He is also the head of the Research Group at the Center of African Studies, which now focuses on decolonial feminism.
Silvie Špánková is an Associate Professor at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). She specializes in Portuguese Literature and is the author of Pelos caminhos do insólito na narrativa breve de Branquinho da Fonseca e Domingos Monteiro (2020) as well as of various articles and essays on Portuguese fiction of the 20th century along with geocriticism (urban studies) in Portuguese literature, Angolan contemporary fiction, and Mozambican poetry.
Daniel Vázquez Touriño is a a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). He specializes in modern and contemporary Latin American Theatre and Drama. He took part in the project “Análisis de la dramaurgia actual en Español (ADEA)” and has contributed to several volumes on Mexican and Chilean contemporary drama. He is author of the books El teatro de Emilio Carballido (2012) and Insignificantes en diálogo con el público: el teatro de la generación Fonca (2020). His essays have appeared in journals including Latin American Theatre Review, INTI. Revista de Literatura Hispánica or Revista Valenciana.
Eva Voldřichová Beránková is a Professor of French literature as well as Vice-Rector of Charles University for International Affairs. She is the author of two individual monographs (La Face cachée, dostoïevskienne, d’Albert Camus; Faisons l’homme à notre image: Pygmalion, le Golem et l’automate comme trois versions du mythe de la création artificielle) and the editor of 8 collective monographs. She has over a hundred articles to her credit in impact journals. Her current research focuses on the relationship between literature and philosophy, European intermediality and the contemporary Quebec novel.
Petr Vurm currently works as a programmer and software developer in state-of-the-art frontend technologies such as Vanilla JavaScript, React.js, Vue.js and Angular.js, before which he worked as a backend developer of Java and Python. His interests include human languages of any sort, be they natural or artificial, as well as the quest to merge the hard and soft sciences, including the unlikely nexus of mathematics and literature. Before his current career, he worked at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic) as a researcher in Francophone literatures specializing in Quebec and African Studies. His doctoral thesis was La création et la créativité de Réjean Ducharme, and he has recently published a monograph on the contemporary Francophone African literature of sub-Saharan Africa entitled Des rives des autres.