Jana Hunter

Research Topic

Temporality, Travel Writing and Art: Mapping the Czech Modernist Consciousness, 1815-1914

Supervisor: Jean-Michel Johnston and Professor Abigail Green

My doctoral project is a cultural history of travel in Bohemia. Situated at the intersection of temporal and spatial histories, I explore the relationship between experiences of travel and perceptions of time between in the second. The aim of my research is to move away from a nation-state framework and reveal the political, social, and cultural networks that emerged through travel and tourism, which situate Bohemia as an interface between the regions of Habsburg Central Europe, but also between Europe and the globe. My project uncovers travel and tourism links in Bohemia and challenges the established discourses on time and space that undergird national histories and display Eastern European ‘backwardness’ and Western European ‘exceptionalism’. In unpacking and explaining the relationship between spatial experiences and perceptions of time, I ask a number of new historical questions: how can the concepts of time and space redefine the position of Bohemia in Habsburg Central Europe? What happens when multiple temporal regimes – both domestic and foreign – interact in different spaces? And how do time and space inform and complicate Bohemia’s existing narratives of modernity and knowledge circulation on a national, regional, and global scale?

My research is funded by the Rawnsley Scholarship at St Hugh's College, as well as the Scatcherd European Scholarship which funded me to spend a term at the University of Vienna, and the Jane Eliza Procter Fellowship which is currently allowing me to spend a year at Princeton University.