Two new books from the FHS, now being published abroad by Bloomsbury and the University of Michigan Press, share a basic premise - the situation of post-socialist countries. While Denisa Tomkova's Empowering Aesthetics deals with art that can support marginalized groups based on their gender, ethnicity, or sexuality, Kateřina Kolářová's Rehabilitative Postsocialism offers an interdiciplinary and intersectional analysis of the very characteristics mentioned above as the ideological foundations of the social consensus of Czechia as a post-socialist country. Together they launched their publications at the Faculty on 22 May 2025 with a debate with the writer Klára Vlasáková, who emphasises similar themes in her work, and the feminist literary theorist Tereza Jiroutová Kynčlova. A diverse audience gathered on the packed seats in the atrium and followed up the discussion with questions. And in the end, despite Denisa Tomková's fear of a wild champagne cork, all the glass panes in our building held up.

Photo by Ondřej Trojan