Anglo-American University in Prague Research Coffee Featuring: Drew Brandon, M.A.
Research Coffee is a series of events aimed to be a platform for discussions about publications, projects, and working papers of AAU Faculty as well as AAU students.
Join us at our next Research Coffee event, scheduled for Friday, April 9, 2021, at 09:30 am, online. The session will be hosted by Drew Brandon, M.A., who will present his paper on “The Secret History of the Hrdlička Museum of Man”. Prof. Ivo T. Budil, Metropolitan University Prague, will be joining us as a discussant of the paper. Please register here in order to be added to the MS Team and receive the full paper.
You can find an abstract of the paper below but to receive the full paper prior to the session please register at the link above.
Abstract:
This talk will describe Aleš Hrdlička’s little-known and surprisingly contentious philanthropic efforts to support physical anthropology in the new Czechoslovakia. It tells the secret story behind an obscure little anthropological museum, the Hrdlička Museum of Man, that still exists in Prague today. Research on Hrdlička’s personal correspondence, stored at the Smithsonian archives in Washington, unveils for the first time how two leading Czech anthropologists, Jindřich Matiegka and Vojtěch Suk, clashed over the resources that Hrdlička provided and wrecked his plans for the museum. This battle resulted in several legal suits and a flurry of anti-Semitic taunts (against Suk). In the end, control of the museum was turned over to a man Hrdlička despised.
These events are open to the public.