The Ethical Mirror: An Architecture of Dissidence in Four Acts chronicles a fifty-year transatlantic dialogue, weaving together the voices of Czech student martyr Jan Palach, American poet David Shapiro, Czech-American architect John Hejduk, and Czech President Václav Havel. The narrative begins with Palach's 1969 self-immolation protesting Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia and traces the profound chain of creative responses it inspired: Shapiro's elegiac poem The Funeral of Jan Palach, followed by Hejduk's architectural tribute—The House of the Suicide and The House of the Mother of the Suicide—culminating in the historic 1991 Prague Castle exhibition, the first American architectural exhibition in post-Communist Czechoslovakia, and the permanent installation of Hejduk's structures in Prague in 2016. Structured in four acts to honor Havel's legacy as one of the most important Czech playwrights of the late twentieth century, this publication provides unprecedented documentation of how architecture, poetry, and political resistance converged across cultures and decades.

Renata Hejduk is an associate professor at Arizona State University. She teaches architectural history and theory in The Design School. She is a faculty affiliate of The Barrett Honors College, the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies, The Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, and the Center for Biomimicry. Her research focuses on European and American avant-garde art, architecture, and urbanism, as well as the intellectual history of post-war America and Europe, and Reggio Emilia Education, spanning from around 1960 to the present. In addition to journal articles, she coedited (with Jim Williamson) The Religious Imagination in Modern and Contemporary Architecture: A Reader (Routledge, 2011). Before her academic career, she served as the assistant curator of European and contemporary art at the Yale University Art Gallery and as the curatorial associate in the Department of Photographs at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum.

Steven Hillyer has curated, designed, and installed numerous exhibitions presenting the work of—and often working directly with—such distinguished architects as Raimund Abraham, John Hejduk, Bernhard Hoesli, Louis I. Kahn, Daniel Libeskind, Franco Purini, Carlo Scarpa, Massimo Scolari, Michael Webb, and Lebbeus Woods; and artists Anthony Candido, Mary Kelly, Costantino Nivola, and Robert Slutzky in keeping with a longstanding tradition of mounting exhibitions and publishing work that informs the pedagogy of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union. Additionally, Hillyer is involved in the fabrication of the numerous publications produced by the school’s Architecture Archive. Hillyer is project director of the Architecture Archive’s Student Work Collection online database and the Voices from the Great Hall Digital Access project, an online database of historical recordings and related ephemera of lectures and events that have taken place in the institution’s venerable Great Hall over its 165-year history.

Kim Shkapich was educated as a filmmaker, designer, and artist. She practices as both a graphic designer and editor. She was the graphic designer and director of exhibitions and lectures at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, the head of the Architectural Archive and architectural exhibitions at The Cooper Union, and a long-time collaborator and book designer/editor for the architect John Hejduk. She has won numerous awards and grants for her books, exhibitions, and research, including the PS1/MoMA Young Architects Award for her project with Obra Architects, she was part of numerous Graham Foundation grants, she was nominated for the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, and several International Architecture Book Award from the American Institute of Architects and many other design awards. Her exhibition designs have graced the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Canadian Centre of Architecture, The Cooper Union, Prague Castle, and other notable venues, including Neutra's Windshield House and the exhibition Autoemotive. She has edited and designed over fifteen books and exhibition catalogues. In addition to her work as a designer, she is the founder of the locavore food brand Lola’s Local Food Lab, based in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

Jim Williamson is a visiting professor of architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Previously, he served as dean of architecture at Texas Tech University (TTU) from 2016 to 2021. He holds a bachelor’s of architecture from TTU, a master’s of architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and pursued graduate studies in history and theory at the Architectural Association. Williamson taught at Cornell University from 2001 to 2016, where he directed the undergraduate and graduate programs and coordinated the freshman design sequence. He has taught design and theory at numerous institutions, including Harvard University, The Cooper Union, Columbia University, the Rhode Island School of Design, Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Williamson coedited The Religious Imagination in Modern Contemporary Architecture: A Reader (Routledge, 2011) with Renata Hejduk. His work is published in Surrealism and Architecture (Routledge, 2004) and numerous journals, including Taiwan Architect, Architectural Design, Japan Architect, Kongsan (Space), and the Journal of Architectural Education.