Between Memory and Return: Immigration, Exile and the Meaning of Home

Using Milan Kundera’s novel “Ignorance” as a point of departure and excerpts from Karen von Kunes’s novel “Among the Sinners” supported with her own personal recollections, the seminar will examine themes of exile, memory, identity, belonging and the complex emotions associated with returning--or not returning--to one’s homeland. Reflections on displacement and the immigrant condition provide a framework for understanding how individuals reconstruct their lives between cultures, languages, friendships, and professions. The discussion will also consider questions, such as: Can one ever truly return to the place one left behind? Open conversation will be encouraged about immigration as both a personal and universal human experience, connecting literary insights with contemporary questions of identity, mobility, and cultural belonging.

Karen von Kunes, Ph.D., most recently taught Czech and Slovak film and literature at the University of Toronto. Prior to her appointment at Toronto, she spent three decades on the faculty at Yale University, where she taught Czech Film, Language and Comparative Literature. During her ten-year tenure at Harvard University, she revitalized Czech Studies across both Harvard College and the Harvard Extension School. She has published extensively; her latest book, Milan Kundera: Known and Unknown, was released in 2025 by Bloomsbury. Her current research examines film director Miloš Forman’s influence on psychiatry. Professor von Kunes is also the author of numerous works on the Czech language and of a novel on diaspora, Among the Sinners. She has received multiple academic honors, including recognition in The Princeton Review’s Best 300 Professors, published by Random House. She is fluent in five European languages.