Identity, Memory and War and Gender

PERPETUAL OTHERS
IN POLISH CULTURE

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BASEES 2016 Perpetual Others

What about?

The panel discusses the re-appearing in

Polish culture figures, symbols and
leitmotivs of the Others, such as a Jew,
Gay and Lesbian and a Woman, and the
most recently the figure of the
Migrant/Foreigner.

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Who?
Panel participants:

DR. URSZULA CHOWANIEC Women as

Strangers in Polish Cultural Production
DR. RENATA INGBRANT Return of the Dead:
Revisiting Polish-Jewish Past in Popular Culture
PROF. MAGORZATA RADKIEWICZ (In)visible
Queer: Non-normative Sexualities in Polish
Cinema
JOANNA KOSMALSKA Encounters with the
Migrant in Contemporary Polish Literature

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Starting point?
Urszula Chowaniecs book
Melancholic Migrating Bodies:
Contemporary Polish Womens Writing
(2015)

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Q&A
Author?

Aliquam consectetuer posuere lorem.

Melancholic Migrating Bodies by
Urszula
Chowaniec
(Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2015) offers the
first systematic overview of Polands literary
and cultural environment after 1989 from
the perspective of womens writing. It
critically surveys the various political and
social transformations of this period through
a close reading of the foremost Polish female
novelists. In this original way, the book
adopts a fresh perspective on some of the
countrys
key
questions,
such
as
Catholicism, nationalism, the patriotic
ethos, history, romantic mythology and the
problem of memory.

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Reading contemporary womens writing as

melancholy texts highlights their often
under-explored neuralgic nature and
emancipatory value. These strangers in
their own lands, as most recent Polish
women writers and their work were
described, are the subject of detailed
analysis in this book, and are also positioned
as the mirrors in which those lands are
reflected. From this perspective, the
melancholic strands in womens writing are
drawn together to provide a diagnosis of the
current situation in Poland, taking into
account unwanted discourses, unwelcomed
subjects and unresolved problems.

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Dr Urszula Chowaniec is Assistant

Professor at Andrzej Frycz
Modrzewski Krakw University,
Poland, and is also a Senior
Teaching Fellow in Polish Language
and Culture at University College
London. Her main areas of research
are contemporary literature and
culture, comparative studies in
womens writing, gender in
contemporary culture and
translation studies. She has edited
and contributed to a number of
volumes, including Masquerade
and Femininity: Essays on Polish
and Russian Women Writers
(2008), Mapping Experience in
Polish and Russian Womens
Writing (2010), and Womens
Voices and Feminism in Polish
Cultural Memory (2012).

Where to buy?
http://www.cambridgescholars.co
m/melancholicmigrating-bodies-incontemporary-polishwomens-writing

Other publications?

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The main ideas behind the thesis

of women as cultural strangers:
In the light of

1). The contemporary backlash in political debate on

gender;
2). Very limited development of women and gender studies
in Poland;
3). Contemporary Polish discourse on womens creativity

It is crucial to see the major traits of Polish discourse on

women as a category that shape the debate on culture and
hence the cultural landscape of the country. As a result
women maintain to be a symbolic others in the social and
cultural imaginary (Urszula Chowaniecs talk)
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Contact:

Urszula: u.chowaniec@gmail.com,
u.chowaniec@ucl.ac.uk
Magorzata: m.radkiewicz@uj.edu.pl
Renata: renata.ingbrant@slav.su.se
Joanna: joanna.kosmalska@gmail.com

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