#  Selected Articles 

 



- "[To Touch the Dust of Anarres: On Ursula K. Le Guin's *The Dispossessed.*](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/to-touch-the-dust-of-anarres/)" *Los Angeles Review of Books*, February 2, 2025.
- "[Prove You're Not a Robot: On Karel Čapek's *R.U.R.*](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/prove-that-youre-not-a-robot-on-karel-capeks-r-u-r-and-the-vision-of-artificial-life/)" *Los Angeles Review of Books*, February 20, 2024.
- "[A Guest from the Unknown: Antigone and Jan Patočka's Cultural Criticism.](https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/bitstream/handle/11222.digilib/143032/1_BohemicaLitteraria_23-2020-2_4.pdf)" *Bohemica Litteraria* 23 (2020): 13-23.
- "Ivan Olbracht's *Nikola the Outlaw*." [Public Books](https://www.publicbooks.org/b-sides-ivan-olbrachts-nikola-the-outlaw/), Sept. 6, 2018. Reprinted in [*B-Side Books: Essays on Forgotten Favorites*](https://cup.columbia.edu/book/b-side-books/9780231200578), ed. John Plotz (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), 128-133.
- “The Shaman, the Greengrocer, and ‘Living in Truth,’” *East European Politics, Societies, and Cultures*(special issue devoted to essays from the above volume), 32:2 (May 2018): 255-265.
- “Palmy za polárním kruhem: O nesamozřejmosti samizdatu v Ledererových Českých rozhovorech" \[Palm Trees Above the Arctic Circle: The Uncertainty of Samizdat in Jiří Lederer’s *Czech Conversations*\].” *Česká literatura* (Prague), 6/2016: 896-906.
- “Šaman, zelinář a ‚život v pravdě‘“ \[The Shaman, the Greengrocer, and ‘Living in Truth’\],” in *Jednoho dne se v našem zelináři cosi vzbouří. Eseje o Moci bezmocných \[One day something in our greengrocer snaps…: Essays on Václav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless”\]*, eds. Jiří Suk and Kristina Andělová (Prague: Institute of Contemporary History, 2016).
- "Desert Europa and the Sea of Ruins: The Post-Apocalyptic Imagination in Egon Bondy's *Afghanistan*." In *The Inhabited Ruins of Central Europe: Re-Imagining Space, History and Memory,* eds. Derek Sayer and Dariusz Gafijczuk (Palgrave, 2013): 205-226.
- "Ruins of a Republic: Czech Modernism After Munich, 1938-1939." In [*Ruins of Modernity*](http://amzn.com/0822344742), eds. Julia Hell and Andreas Schönle (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010): 118-132.
- "Czech Literature" (roundtable on East Central European literatures since the fall of Communism), *East European Politics and Societies* 23:4 (November 2009): 561-563.
- "The Senses of Displacement: Ivan Wernisch's Dramatic Monologues." In *Between Texts, Languages, and Cultures: A Festschrift for Michael Henry Heim*, eds. Craig Cravens, Masako U. Fidler, and Susan C. Kresin (Slavica, 2008): 227-42. \[A Czech translation of this article appeared as "Smysl dezorientace: dramatické monology Ivana Wernische," trans. Dalibor Dobiáš, in *Krajiny češtiny* (Prague) (December 2009): 27-41.\]
- "[Czech Literature](http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Czech_Literature)." 4500-word article on Czech-Jewish literature from its beginnings to the present, in *The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe* ([print](http://www.yivoinstitute.org/publications/index.php?tid=109&aid=269?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=auto&width=auto) and [electronic](http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/)versions), editor-in-chief Gershon David Hundert (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). I also wrote the Encyclopedia's author entries on [František Gellner](http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Gellner_Frantisek), [Egon Hostovský](http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Hostovsky_Egon),[Ivan Olbracht](http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Olbracht_Ivan), [Jiří Orten](http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Orten_Jiri), [Roman Jakobson](http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Jakobson_Roman_Osipovich), [Jiří Weil](http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Weil_Jiri), [Richard Weiner](http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Weiner_Richard), and [Julius Zeyer](http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Zeyer_Julius).
- "Writing in a Polluted Semiosphere: Everyday Life in Lotman, Foucault, and de Certeau." In [*Lotman and Cultural Studies: Encounters and Extensions*](http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/3715.htm). Ed. Andreas Schonle (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006): 322-344.
- "[Promĕny bytu: Metamorfózy soukromého prostoru v české literatuře](http://sl.ff.cuni.cz/files/users/u3/bolton.pdf). \[What Lies in Wait Behind the Wall: Metamorphoses of Domestic Space in Czech Literature\]." *Svĕt literatury* (Prague), 16.34 (Fall 2006): 120-134.
- "[Reading Michal Ajvaz](http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/context-n17/)." *Context* 17 (spring 2005).
- "Mourning Becomes the Nation: The Funeral of Tomáš Masaryk in 1937.” *Bohemia* 45.1 (2004): 115-131.
- "Josef Bor." Holocaust Novelists (*Dictionary of Literary Biography*, Volume 299), ed. Efraim Sicher (Detroit: Gale, 2004): 58-64.
- "[Reading Patrik Ouředník](http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/context-n15/)." *Context* 15 (spring 2004).
- “Elegie veřejné a soukromé: Melancholie u Seiferta, Ortena a Blatného \[Public and Private Elegies: Melancholy in Seifert, Orten, and Blatný\].” *Česká literatura* (Prague), 49.2 (2001): 128-143.
- “Volný verš v Seifertově poezii dvacátých let \[Free Verse in Seifert’s Poetry of the 1920’s\].” In *Šnykerikyk* \[Festschrift for Professor Miroslav Červenka\], eds. Jitka Bednářová and Dalibor Dobiáš (Brno: Host, 1998): 72-81.
- “Rozházené údy Jana Zábrany \[Jan Zábrana’s Scattered Limbs (on the diaries of Czech poet Jan Zábrana)\].” *Tvar* (Prague)*,* 6.1 (12 January 1995): 11.