The lexicography department was established on 1 May 2010 with the ongoing objective to develop the internet Dictionary of Czech Literature after 1945 (http://www.slovnikceskeliteratury.cz). Work on the dictionary started in 2005 in the former Department for the Research of 20th Century Literature; in 2008, the department published the then-current version of roughly 900 writer entries (based on Janoušek’s Dictionary of Czech Writers after 1945) and approximately 150 entries on periodicals (based on Dokoupil’s Dictionary of Czech Literary Magazines, Periodical Literary Anthologies and Almanacs). In 2009–2013, the dictionary expanded with more than 100 entries on the institutions of literary life in the post-war period, a selection of which was published as Czech Literary Publishing Houses 1949–1989 by Academia in 2014. After finishing work on this volume, members of the department are returning to the gradual updating of mainly personal entries of the internet Dictionary of Czech Literature after 1945.
Since 2015, the department has been implementing a project with the working title of Encyclopaedia of Czech Literary Samizdat, supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic until 2017. It has also established a working group that researches samizdat as a medium of cultural opposition in a broader historical and social context which involves collaboration with experts such as Dr. Tomáš Glanc, PhDr. Michal Kopeček, Ph.D. (Institute of Modern History of the AS CR), Joseph Grim Feinberg, M.A., Ph.D. (Institute of Philosophy of the AS CR) and other colleagues.
Members of the department are also engaged in both long-term and short-term edition work (contribution to the publishing of the Collected Works of Josef Škvorecký and Vladimír Körner) and other work related to their individual research interests (see their personal bios).
Previous projects
The Encyclopaedia of Czech Samizdat I – Literary Samizdat (Michal Přibáň, Czech Science Foundation 2015–2019)
The aim of the project is to create an Encyclopedia of Czech Literary Samizdat as a first step towards a general Encyclopedia of Czech Samizdat. By means of individual entries, the authors intend to map and characterize both fundamental and marginal samizdat editions, journals, periodicals and anthologies, as well as to introduce key figures who helped create and maintain the samizdat subculture. The core of the list of entries is from the period 1948-1989, although many entries will refer to a wider context, overlapping the main period and pointing out connections between Czech samizdat and similar activities in the Central Europe of the time; in justified cases they also cross the border from samizdat towards independent culture in general.
Departmental members: