Born and raised in Northern England, Václav Lucien Paris completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the faculty of the English department at City College in 2014. He teaches courses on modernism, comparative literature, queer theory, and literary theory, as well as a well-known regular class on James Joyce’s Ulysses. His research interests include also the study of literature and the environment. Currently he is working on a book about eccentrics and outsiders in 20^th century literature, describing what they teach us about the edges of modernity, primitivism, and the end of the world. An article version of one chapter of this book project, on Jan “Eskimo” Welzl was published in Modernism/modernity in 2022. Another article taken from the same project, on the Yoruba writer Amos Tutuola, is forthcoming in Comparative Literature.

Václav’s first book, The Evolutions of Modernist Epic, considers the changing relations between the so-called Eclipse of Darwinism and modernist national narratives from around the world. Individual chapters focus on works by Gertrude Stein, Jaroslav Hašek, James Joyce, Mário de Andrade, and Virginia Woolf. This book was published with Oxford University Press in 2021 with excellent reviews.

A short article adapted from The Evolutions of Modernist Epic, titled “Beginning Again with Modernist Epic,” was published in Modernism/modernity Print + in 2016. Another article, drawn from the final chapter and titled “The Nature of Comparison” is published in Comparative Literature Studies in 2020. Some of Václav Paris's other articles can be found at his academia page or on CUNY Academic Works.

Václav is also a passionate scholar of languages and translator. His work spans a number of different national and linguistic traditions, including Czech, French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Italian. His published translations include Petr Vopěnka’s New Infinitary Mathematics (Chicago / Karolínum: 2023), Zdeněk Kratochvíl’s monograph The Philosophy of Living Nature (University of Chicago Press / Karolínum, 2016) and Vilém Flusser’s “The Power of Images” (Fotograf, 2019). He regularly translates for the Prague-based contemporary arts journal, Fotograf. 

Václav is the recipient of numerous awards, including a scholarship at the James Joyce Foundation in Zurich, and, a six-month National Endowment in the Humanities grant, a Faculty Fellowship Publication Award, and various PSC CUNY awards. He is a book and article reviewer for Oxford University Press, Routledge, Modernism/modernity, Comparative Literature Studies, and The Journal of Modern Literature. He has also organized (or helped to organize) a number of important conferences recently, including The World of Jaroslav Hašek – held at Columbia University Institute for Comparative Literature and Society in April 2023, and the Modernist Studies Studies Association conference in Brooklyn in October 2023.

Václav gave the keynote speech at the conference Contemporary Modernisms at the Goethe University in Frankfurt in May 2023 and is scheduled to give a keynote talk at the conference, Crossing Boundaries: Literary and Linguistic Intersections in Modernist Studies in Rome in May 2024.

In his free time Václav is a keen birdwatcher and photographer, and mountain walker. His blog, describing various travels is called footprints.

BOOKS

• The Evolutions of Modernist Epic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021

This comparative study proposes a relation between evolutionary thought and epic fiction in the 1920s. Drawing on science studies and queer theory, it describes how modernist authors took part in the so-called eclipse of Darwinism. Individual case studies include readings of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and Mário de Andrade’s Macunaíma.

Reviews:

• Derek Hand, “The Evolutions of Modernist Epic by Václav Paris (review)” James Joyce Quarterly 59.4 (Summer 2022), 733-736
• Sağlam, Büke, “Understanding modernist epic from an evolutionary perspective” Slavica litteraria. 2021, 24. 2 (2021), 150-152
   
• CCNY World Humanities. Open Source Online Textbook. https://pressbooks.cuny.edu/worldhum/ 2022.

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES

• “Tutuola in the Bush of Primitivism” Forthcoming at Comparative Literature.
• “When wasn’t Modernism?” Forthcoming at Textual Practice.
• “Eccentric Primitivism: The World of Jan ‘Eskimo’ Welzl.” Modernism/modernity 29.2. (April 2022), 241-64.
• “The Nature of Comparison: Macunaima and Orlando.” Comparative Literature Studies 57.1 (Summer 2020), 41-68.
• “Anna Livia Plurabella česká,” Litikon 2.1 (2017), 102-113.

• “T.E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and the Erotics of Literary History: Straddling Epic.” English Literature in Transition, 60.1 (2017): 16-35.
• “Beginning Again with Modernist Epic.” Modernism/modernity Print+, 1.3 (October 2016).
• “Pound and Disability,” Paideuma 42 (2015), 85-108.
• “Uncreative Influence: Louis Aragon’s Paysan de Paris and Walter Benjamin’s Passagen-Werk,” Journal of Modern Literature. 37.1 (Fall 2013): 21-39.
• “Gertrude Stein’s Translations of Philippe Pétain’s Speeches,” Jacket 2 (May 6, 2013).
• “The Queer Dialectic of Whitman’s Nation: ‘Let’ in “Respondez,” Arizona Quarterly 69.3 (Autumn 2013): 1-22.
• “Picturing the Wake: Arcimboldo, Joyce and his ‘Monster,’” James Joyce Quarterly. 49.2. (Winter 2012): 235-260.

BOOK CHAPTERS

• “Modernism, History, and Censorship: The United States vs. Two Books: Pay Day and Ulysses, 1930-1933,” in Paparunas, Penny, Martin Heusser and Frances Ilmberger, eds. Parallaxing Joyce. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, 2017. 138-153.
• “Osudy a Encyklopedie” in Fikce Jaroslava Haška, ed. František Podhajský. Prague: Akademie Věd, 2016: 203-224.

SELECTED TRANSLATIONS

• Vopěnka, Petr, The New Infinitary Mathematics trans. Václav Paris et al. Prague: Karolinum, 2023.
• Flusser, Vilém, “The Power of Images” Fotograf 34 - “The Archaeology of Euphoria: 1985–1995” (October 2019), 100-102.
• Kratochvíl, Zdeněk, The Philosophy of Living Nature. Prague: Karolínum (Charles University Press, distributed in the USA by Chicago University Press), 2016.
• Neubauer, Zdeněk, Consolatio Philosophiae Hodierna. Prague: Library of Václav Havel, 2010.

SELECTED REVIEWS AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS

• Review of Rosner, Victoria, Machines for Living: Modernism and Domestic Life. 2020. James Joyce Quarterly 59, ii (Winter 2022): 359-64.
• “The Location of the Contemporary Novel” ASAP/Journal. March 18, 2021.
• “Rileggendo Montalbano,” La Riviera, August 18, 2019, 14.
• “The Dogs,” Fiction 64, Fall 2019, 264-66.
• “Modernist Paris” in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. 2018.
• “Poetry in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Marjorie Perloff's Unoriginal Genius, and Charles Bernstein’s Attack of the Difficult Poems,” Journal of Modern Literature. 35.3. (2012): 183-199.
• “On The Consolation of Poetry: On Two Recent Books by René Char,” Jacket 2 (March 26, 2012).
• “On Being George Oppen: A Review of Peter Nicholls, George Oppen and the Fate of Modernism,” Journal of Modern Literature, 34.1 (Fall 2010): 182-184.
• “On Surrealism and the Art of Crime: Considered as One of the Fine Starts,” Journal of Modern Literature 33.4 (Summer 2010): 190-197. “The Fourth Annual UCD James Joyce Research Colloquium: 14–16 April 2011,” Dublin James Joyce Journal, 4 (2011): 127-30.
• “A Backward Glance at the XXII International James Joyce Symposium, Prague, Czech Republic, 13-18 June 2010,” James Joyce Quarterly, 47.1 (Fall 2009): 18-20.

• WHUM 101: World Humanities I (S2015, F2016)

In Fall 2016, this course was run as a pilot version of Great Books and their Legacies.

• WHUM 102: World Humanities 2 (S2021, F2021)

In Spring and Fall 2021, in addition to teaching a section of World Humanities 2, I was also the coordinator for all sections of the course.

• ENGL 25000: Introduction to Literary Study (F2014, F2016, F2017, F2023)
• ENGL 28000: Introduction to Comparative Literature (F2015, S2019)
• ENGL 36500 Kafka and the Kafkaesque (S2018, S2023)
• ENGL 36501: James Joyce (S2015, S2017, S2019)
• ENGL 36508: Virginia Woolf and her World (S 2021)

Due to the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic, this course was taught entirely online.

• ENGL 37200: Literary Theory (F2019, S2022)
• ENGL 37200: Queer Theory (F2017)
• ENGL 40145: Global Modernisms (capstone seminar; F2021)

Due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, this course was taught as a hybrid online and in-person course.

• ENGL 49028: Ulysses at 100 (capstone seminar, F2022)
• ENGL B1612: Modernism (F2014, F2015) (graduate)
• ENGL B1703: Literary Theory (F2019, S2022) (graduate)
• ENGL B1809: Virginia Woolf (S2021) (graduate)

Due to the Pandemic, this course was taught entirely online.

• ENGL B2130: The Kafkaesque (S2018, S2023) (graduate)
• ENGL B2113: Queer Novels (S2017) (graduate)