CALL FOR PH.D. CANDIDATES
Iveta Nakládalová
Sinofon / Department of Romance languages
Palacký University Olomouc

Iveta Nakládalová, Ph.D., accepts, as supervisor, future Ph.D. candidates.

She is an expert in Comparative Literature. She has been focusing on Early Modern cultural history, studying mainly the Early Modern censorship, Early Modern theory of reading, 16th and 17th century spiritual literature, pre-modern organization of knowledge (artes excerpendi), the genre of Utopia, and Early Modern evangelization of China.

Within this call, she offers her expertise in Early History of Christianity in China, namely in the following areas:

  1. Catholic missions in China in the 16th and 17th centuries (the Jesuits and the mendicant orders).
  2. Evangelization strategy of different orders (missiological and theological discourse).
  3. Comparison between the Early Modern evangelization strategies in China (& the Philippines & Japan), on the one hand, and Latin America, on the other.
  4. Censorship of missionary documents.
  5. Early Modern discursive and iconographic “construction” of China. Imagological analysis of Early Modern perception of China.
  6. Early Modern travels to China, travel literature.

7. Transcultural translation (missionary materials, China, 16th and 17th centuries).

Requirements for the candidates:

  1. Master’s degree (or equivalent) in History or Early Modern History, Comparative Literature, Philology, Digital Humanities, or other related disciplines (e.g. History of Religions, Theology, Anthropology).
  2. Profound interest in the given topic and in the given chronological period.
  3. Good command of English (reading & writing).
  4. Good command (reading skills) of at least one Romance language (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, or French).

(5.) Knowledge of Modern Chinese is a plus, but is not necessary, as well as the knowledge of Classical Chinese. The research will focus on primary sources written in European languages or in Latin (naturally, it can be complemented with analysis of texts written by the missionaries in Chinese, or by secondary sources in Chinese).

(6.) Knowledge of Latin is a plus.  

  1. Open mind and spirit, willingness and readiness to collaborate.

Language of the Ph.D. thesis:

Primarily, English. In justified cases (e.g. in a thesis dealing with the difference in evangelization of China and Latin America), Spanish. In exceptional and duly justified cases, Italian.