Karen von Kunes

Senior Lector in Czech Studies
Jonathan Edwards College K21
(203) 432-0390
karen.vonkunes@yale.edu

Education
McGill University, Montreal: Ph.D., B.A.
(summa cum laude)
University of Texas at Austin: MBA Diploma
Prague Language Institute: Equivalent A.B. Diploma

Research interests
Czech language teaching (in view of current globalization), lexicography (historical and comparative), modern Czech literature (Kundera, Havel and Hrabal), European literature (Kafka, Hesse, Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak), relation of literature to social pshychology (Pinker), Czech film (Forman, Menzel and Svankmajer), identity of Czech expatriate writers and filmmakers, especially in the works of Milan Kundera, and Milos Forman, and creative screenwriting.

Current courses
All levels of Czech Language
Milan Kundera: The Czech Novelist and French Thinker
Milos Forman and his Film
In Kafka's Spirit: Prague Film and Fiction (Yale Summer Sessions in Prague)

Selected Publications
Literary articles in professional journals and other publications (up to 2008)

Author of textbooks Czech Step by Step, and Check Your Czech

English-Czech Czech-English Dictionary with Grammar Introduction (forthcoming)

Beyond the Imaginable: 240 Ways of Looking at Czech (1999)

Chapter in Critical Essays on Milan Kundera (1999)

Ed. Barron's Travel Wise Czech (1998)

72 Discussions of the Czech Language (1995)

Works in Progress
Milan Kundera and Milos Forman: In Search of Existential Possibility

Living Czech: Current Idioms