Dorota Masłowska’s Provinces- A lecture by Prof. Katarzyna Czeczot
On May 26, Prof. Katarzyna Czeczot will argue that the language of Dorota Masłowska's Snow White and Russian Red (Wojna polsko-ruska pod flagą biało-czerwoną) has been shaped by the history of Poland as a Russian province in the 19th century and as a satellite country of the Soviet Union. The talk will explore the cultural game of inferiority and superiority, seen as inseparable from empire and province’s geography.
The second edition of Dorota Masłowska's debut novel Snow White and Russian Red (Wojna polsko-ruska pod flagą biało-czerwoną) comes up with the cover of Maciej Sieńczyk, cartoonist, illustrator, comic book creator. His drawing transforms two images crucial for Polish visual culture. The first one would be a nineteenth-century allegory of Poland as a woman trampled by a horse on which a Cossack with a saber sits. The second one depicts a Polish nurse providing care for an insurgent, probably during the Warsaw Uprising (1944). Both scenes outlined by Sieńczyk, referring to Polish martyrdom iconography, reveal the paradoxes of relations between Poland and Russia, relations to which the title of Masłowska's novel also refers. Snow White and Russian Red's language is the product of a post-dependent imagination, shaped by the history of Poland as a Russian province in the 19th century and as a satellite country of the USSR in the 20th century. The author of this novel excellently manages to recreate the cultural game of inferiority and superiority, inseparable from empire and provinces' geography.
Wednesday, May 26, 2021, 2 PM EDT
Katarzyna Czeczot is a literature historian, feminist, associate professor at the Institute of Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She is interested in literature and visual culture from the French Revolution to the present times. She is the co-author of the exhibition The Polish Woman. Medium, Shadow, Image at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, 2005. She is the co-editor of Encyklopedia gender (2014) and the author of Ophelism: Romantic appropriations, feminist interventions (2016, in Polish). In the series "New Romantic Library" she published three anthologies (in Polish): Magnetism, Psychiatric practices, and (with Michał Pospiszył) Romantic Anti-capitalism. She wrote reviews and essays published, among others, in "n.paradoxa", "Teksty Drugie", "Praktyka Teoretyczna", "Widok", "Notatnik Teatralny", "Czas Kultury", "Dwutygodnik", and "Glissando." She is a member of the editorial staff of "Praktyka Teoretyczna" and "Wiek XIX."
The lecture is presented in cooperation with the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences and is part of the Tadeusz Solowij Lectures of the Kosciuszko Foundation.
The webinar is free and open to the public. Registration is required. An unlimited number of registrations will be accepted, however a maximum of 100 participants will be allowed to join on a first-come-first-served basis. The recording of the lecture will be posted on the Foundation's YouTube channel.
Information
See also
Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory
Almost 40 years after Nabokov's death his texts continue to function as literary Fabergé eggs in which scholars keep finding hidden surprises and previously overlooked details. As Nabokov wrote in Conclusive Evidence, "the unravelling of a riddle is the purest and most basic act of the human mind." However, readers and critics are divided on the issue of whether Nabokov is a postmodern riddle-maker enjoying the game itself without enabling the player to reach the ultimate solution, or whether the riddles are solvable by a reader astute enough to follow all the sophisticated patterns and allusions which point to Nabokov's metaphysical convictions.
Władysław Reymont through the prism of film adaptations (Andrzej Wajda and others) - A lecture and multimedia presentation by Prof. Tomasz Żukowski
On June 8, Prof. Tomasz Żukowski will examine Reymont’s texts and their adaptations in the context of the discussion about how national history relates to the history of social groups and the conflicts between them. The lecture is presented in cooperation with the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences and is part of the Tadeusz Solowij Lectures of the Kosciuszko Foundation.
Allen Kuharski, Richard Lowe: The Digital Archiving of Performance Data: The Case of Witold Gombrowicz / Otwarte zebranie Centrum Humanistyki Cyfrowej IBL PAN
Varieties of Meaning and Content / The third "Context, Cognition and Communication"
The third Context, Cognition and Communication Conference will be hosted by the Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. The main theme of the conference is "Varieties of Meaning and Content".