A Richmond alum’s love letter to Prague

In the title of her new book, Cynthia Paces, W’92, crowns Prague the heart of Europe. The city has had a piece of her historian’s heart since her undergraduate summer study abroad — an experience that informed not only her interest in urban history but also her interdisciplinary approach.

Paces is a professor of modern and East Central European history at the College of New Jersey. Her research explores cities as historical markers shaped by collective memory, with Prague being her specialty. What started as an interest in her Czech heritage as an undergraduate became a fascination with Prague’s diversity. It results from the city’s history of political upheavals, one of which she experienced as an as a student during her stay right after the fall of Czechoslovakia’s communist government.

“I am really interested in this idea of how space affects who we are,” Paces said. “Even if people aren’t necessarily thinking, ‘There’s that monument to this,’ or, ‘There’s that building about that,’ they’re affected by the environment they’re living in. I see the city itself as a primary source.”

The city is the foundation of her research and her classes. Every few years, Paces teaches a Holocaust and Genocide study tour. Its key component is a three-week trip to either Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, or Armenia, sometimes moving between countries. Prague is often a destination due to its preserved Jewish quarter. While she can share stories in the classroom, Paces believes the best learning opportunity comes during these trips.  

“At heart, I am a teacher, and I really love working with students and seeing people see things for the first time,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of great opportunities to teach in a way that I’m letting students touch the past.”

And to “touch the past,” her students need the full picture. Beyond textbooks, she teaches history through sources that share an on-the-ground experience, such as trips, films, and news articles. For example, students in her seminar on Holocaust testimonies transcribe first-hand accounts of Holocaust survivors, recordings of which are housed at Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. 

Her book, Prague: The Heart of Europe, is her love letter to the city. She traces the last 11 centuries of its history, from its reputation as a golden city to its darker periods of antisemitism and prejudice against immigrants. She also highlights female contributors to Prague’s development, who include a medieval princess who founded the first co-ed monastery that was located north of the Alps. It’s a project six years — and a lifetime — in the making.

“Prague has been a place that is a second home for me,” she said. “I wanted to capture all of the things I love [such as] the architecture and my family’s past, but I also wanted to tell a complicated story. You can love a place but love it in its fullness of the darkness of the past, as well as the incredible beauty.”