Read more about the 2012 PSP Theme here:  Pitching the Sacred: Art and Spirituality

Prague Summer Program Overview

The culmination of a decade of cooperation with the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, the Prague Summer Program offers writers, photographers and students of culture from a variety of backgrounds the opportunity to be mentored by some of the biggest names in contemporary English-language literature and world photography, as well as by luminaries of Central European culture. Past faculty and guests have included such literary talents as Ann Beattie, Charles Baxter, Mark Doty, Carolyn Forche, William Gass, Donald Hall, Edward Hirsch, Miroslav Holub, Mary Karr, Tracy Kidder, Carolyn Kizer, Ivan Klima, Sydney Lea, Philip Levine, Valery Martin, William Matthews, Christopher Merrill, Grace Paley, Jayne Anne Phillips, Francine Prose, Stanley Plumly, Gerald Stern, Amy Tan, Jean Valentine, Michael Waters and many others.

The eager novice and the seasoned professional alike are mentored with equal seriousness and respect. In recent years, undergraduate and graduate students from Arizona State University, the University of Iowa, Berkeley, University of Virginia, Harvard, Yale, NYU, Columbia, Wesleyan, Middlebury, and the University of Michigan, to name but a few stellar American institutions, have earned academic credit through the PSP from Western Michigan University.

For the month of July participants will be members of a unique and vital community of artists and students of art and culture. Unmarked by the wars and brutal occupations it has suffered, Prague is considered by many the most beautiful European city. If indeed Prague has been "the Left Bank of the '90s," as has been asserted in the world media, the Prague Summer Program has contributed significantly to that lofty designation.

Our photography offerings reflect the PSP philosophy that strong arts pedagogy dovetailed with culture studies results in a deeply enriching experience. Each week of the PSP, our photographers will visit the studios of world-renowned Czech and Slovak photographic artists who will open their lives to reveal the relation of technique to vision, and how the particular historical and cultural contexts of their lives are expressed through their images. Our photographers will visit prestigious collections and meet with local curators, as well as having the option to travel on weekends to villages and cities across Bohemia, and Moravia. Current and past lecturers of our photography program include: Anne Wilkes Tucker, Keith Carter, Michael Kenna, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Vaclav Jirasek, Jindrich Streit, Dana Kynderova, Stepan Grygor, Ivan Pinkava, Antonin Dufek and others.