Katie Googe is an expert 
on American literature. During the 2024/2025 academic year, she spent eight months at the Department of English and American Studies at Masaryk University in Brno, where she explored the connections between Czech science fiction in the aftermath of the First World War and depictions of time and colonialism in early American speculative fiction. Coming from the University of Southern California, Katie was excited to experience Czech culture firsthand. While she enjoyed immersing herself in local traditions, she was also struck by how international her academic environment turned out to be. In her Brno classroom, students and colleagues from nearly every continent sparked conversations that enriched her understanding of literature and culture far beyond the lecture hall. Reflecting on her Fulbright experience, Katie shares: "Over the next two semesters, I learned more from my students than I could have even imagined."
On my final night in Brno before I returned to the United States, I found myself sitting in a rooftop restaurant listening to Spanish dance music while eating vegetable biryani and garlic naan. Gathered around the table were not just Czechs and Slovaks, but friends from every continent except Antarctica. When I applied to be a Fulbright Scholar at the Department of English and American Studies at Masaryk University, I expected to be an ambassador between two cultures. I came ready to learn about Czech language and food and history and to teach students about the literature and society of the United States. And I did accomplish those two goals. But what I didn’t expect was to find myself a part of an international city of scholars, students and workers that made my Fulbright experience a life-changing experience so much bigger than a simple two-way exchange.
I began to realize this when I walked into a classroom to teach my first course, “Origins of American Science Fiction.” Like most teachers on the first day of class, I asked the students to go around the room and introduce themselves. In addition to students from Brno itself and other parts of the Czech Republic, I found that I had students from as far away as Iran and Peru all gathered here to learn together. This was an incredibly exciting discovery for me. I believe that I have a lot to share with students about American literature, but I applied to come to Masaryk University because I also believe that I have a lot to learn from others. When I realized how many different perspectives were in my classroom, I knew that it would be an amazing opportunity for all of us.
Over the next two semesters, I learned more from my students than I could have even imagined. My Czech students not only taught me (and all the other foreigners in class) how to use a Czech keyboard, but they also pushed me to think more about the value of American literature. Why is this literature important for a Czech student? Some of those answers were easy, especially in an English department, but this class taught me to go deeper and think more about my own research and my own culture.
My research has often made connections between writing done in the United States and Caribbean, Canadian, and British history and literature. My Czech students especially asked questions and gave presentations that considered the similarities and differences between events and ideas in the United States and in central Europe. They told me about the old communist-era science fiction films with the same premise as the short stories we were reading and compared Mark Twain’s portrayal of feudal England to what they had learned about in their own history classes.
Students from other parts of the world were just as eager to share their experiences. During her presentation on an early 20th century African American novel, one of my students from Kenya gave an impromptu lesson in African geography. My students from Spain helped us understand some of the dialogue from a novel set in the Spanish-speaking American southwest. My classroom became a place not just to learn about American literature, but a real example of what I think is best about Fulbright and academia more broadly: they provide a place where people can come together and share ideas across different backgrounds.
My international learning during my grant extended beyond the classroom. At the conferences I attended, I saw that my Czech colleagues had embraced a wide view of English literature, which helped me expand my own horizons. I learned about the legacy of colonialism in history textbooks in Trinidad and the performance history of Tony Kushner in Slovakia. I even learned about the history of Brno from a Canadian! These conferences also let me talk about my own work with colleagues, and I found that their expertise not only in American literature, but in such diverse areas as Australian nonfiction and Indian English linguistics, helped me think differently about my research.
Of course, my learning was not limited to my professional activities during my stay in Brno. It was in a completely different classroom that I met most of the people who would form my international friend group. I arrived in Brno ready to try to learn Czech, despite all the warnings about how difficult it is, and at Masaryk University’s Czech classes, I learned much more than grammar. I found myself studying travel vocabulary with a PhD student from Greece and practicing ordering food with a postdoc from Nigeria. The friends that I met in this class showed how many different international experiences coexist in Brno. Even though we were all at the same university and learning Czech together, we came from many different places, cultures, and disciplines. Together we tried new Czech experiences, like learning to celebrate name days and drinking burčák. But we also brought our own culture with us. Because of my friends from Czech class, I joined a cricket team. I didn’t know anything about cricket before I moved to Brno! Cricket is its own international experience. Not only did I get to practice Czech with my fellow players, but my coach taught me a few Hindi words so I could keep up with his instructions.
Another unexpected place to practice several different languages was at tango lessons. I had actually considered taking dance classes in Brno, since I have enjoyed ballroom classes in the past. I had expected to learn polkas or waltzes, but one of my friends had always wanted to learn tango. So with only a little bit of Czech between the two of us, we set off to learn the national dance of Argentina. Our instructors had mastered not only the tango but also the words “forward,” “back,” and step” in English. Fortunately, with those essential vocabulary words, a lot of pointing, and my command of the Czech phrase “nerozumím” (“I don’t understand”), my friend and I managed to get into an intermediate tango class after a couple of months. By the time our classes ended for the summer, I had learned important new phrases like “levá noha” (“left leg”) and “rotace” (“spin”). I also had a new place to practice what I was learning in my Czech class. The day I was able to use the future tense to tell the instructor that I wasn’t going to be at the next class was one of the proudest of my time in Brno. Though I never quite stopped confusing my dance partner by interchangeably using the Czech, Spanish, and English names for the same move!
The longer I lived in Brno, the more I came to appreciate it as a truly international city. It’s easy to look at a place with three universities and many large companies and see what draws people here. But it was entirely different to sit with a class and make jokes about how many of us were called by our language’s unique nickname for “Katherine.” Or to drink svařák and eat bramboráky at a Christmas market while speaking Spanish with friends from Mexico. When I arrived in Brno, I never could have foreseen what that last night looked like, but after eight months, it felt perfect that my Czech adventure should end by bringing together different people and cultures looking out over the buildings of Brno.
