Center for Cultural and Literary Studies of Communism

Room 138

The Center for Cultural and Literary Studies of Communism was founded on April 30, 2011. The scholars who form the team use various methodological tools and sources of inspiration: discourse analysis, narratology, Hyden White’s idea of historical emplotment, Renhard Kosselleck’s historical semantics, the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault. But all their works merge into one whole. They focus on the analysis of the notion and the phenomenon denoted by communism and its changing fate from the 1940s to the present day. Therefore, the team’s interests lie in images of communism and broadly understood pragmatism, as well as the complicated semantics of this term in literary works, films, journalistic texts, essays, biographies, scholarly works, and artifacts. Communism and its old and contemporary textualizations are treated as cultural practice whose discursive dimension seems to be inextricably linked with the social aspect.

Members of the Center:

Chair: PhD Grzegorz Wołowiec


PhD Katarzyna Chmielewska

PhD Krzysztof Gajewski


Professor Emeritus Michał Głowiński


PhD Kajetan Mojsak

PhD Agnieszka Mrozik

Mr. Paweł Rams, M.A., a doctoral student at the Institute

Associate Professor Anna Sobieska


Mr. Bartłomiej Starnawski, M.A.


PhD Tomasz Żukowski, M.A.

Members of the Center from Outside of the Institute:

PhD Anna Artwińska, the University of Hamburg

PhD Aranzazu Calderón Puerta, the University of Warsaw

PhD Aleksandra Sekuła

PhD Anna Zawadzka, the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Office hours: Wednesdays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.; Room 131.


Collaborative Grants and Research Projects Carried out by the Center:

1) A grant of the National Program for the Development of the Humanities, “Communism: A History of the Concept in Poland, 1944-1989. Interpretations and the Methods of Use in Literature, Culture, and Society" (no. 0064/NPRH2/H11/81/2013). The project’s leader: Professor Michał Głowiński. The planned time of the project’s realization: 2013 – 2018.

2) A grant of the National Science Center, “To Tell the People’s Republic of Poland" (no. 4502/B/H03/2011/40). The project, under the guidance of Professor Michał Głowiński, was carried out from May 20, 2011 to May 19, 2013. It has been completed.

The Publishing House of the Institute for Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences publishes a series OSKiLK titled “Communism: Ideas, Discourses, and Practices." Edited by Katarzyna Chmielewska and Grzegorz Wołowiec.

So far the following books have been published in the series:

·         Opowiedzieć PRL [To Tell the People’s Republic of Poland]. Ed. Katarzyna Chmielewska and Grzegorz Wołowiec. Warsaw: IBL PAN, 2011.

·         Literatura i socjalizm [Literature and Socialism]. Ed. Katarzyna Chmielewska, Dorota Krawczyńska, and Grzegorz Wołowiec. Warsaw: IBL PAN, 2012.

·         PRL – życie po życiu [The People’s Republic of Poland: Life After Life]. Ed. Katarzyna Chmielewska, Agnieszka Mrozik, and Grzegorz Wołowiec. Warsaw: IBL PAN, 2012.

·         Rok 1966. PRL na zakręcie [The Year 1966. The People’s Republic of Poland at a Turn]. Ed. Katarzyna Chmielewska, Grzegorz Wołowiec, and Tomasz Żukowski. Warsaw: IBL PAN, 2014.

 

The team as a whole has also worked on the theme issue of the journal Teksty Drugie 2 (2013).

Between 21 - 23 February 2011, the team organized a nationwide conference, “To tell The People’s Republic of Poland," devoted to contemporary literature and the discursive strategies of the commemoration of the closed era.

In 2012-2014, The Centre for Cultural and Literary Studies of Communism organized a series of panel discussions:

In 2012:

1. "How to Live with Communism? The People’s Republic of Poland and Communism in the Contemporary Polish Journalistic Discourse" (June 11, 2012), with the participation of Katarzyna Chmielewska,  Agnieszka Mrozik,  Anna Zawadzka, and Tomasz Żukowski.

2. "The People’s Republic of Poland in the (Auto)biography" (October 21, 2012), with the participation of Michał Czaja, Joanna Szczęsna, Grzegorz Wołowiec, and Tomasz Żukowski.

3. "The Gender of the People’s Republic of Poland – the Gender of Communism" (December 5, 2012), with the participation of Aranzazu Calderón Puerta, Agnieszka Mrozik, Anna Sobieska, and Eliza Szybowicz.

In 2012:

1. "Communism and Nationalism" (April 10, 2013), with the participation of Paweł Kuciński, Tomasz Żukowski, Katarzyna Chmielewska (moderator), and Anna Zawadzka.

2. "Subversive Narratives about Communism" (May 15, 2013), with the participation of Michał Czaja, Anna Sobieska (moderator), Przemysław Czapliński, and Kinga Dunin.

3. "Communism and Historical Memory" (November 20, 2013), with the participation of Grzegorz Wołowiec, Kajetan Mojsak (moderator), Katarzyna Chmielewska, and August Grabski.

4. "Communism in the Family, the Family in Communism" (December 11, 2013), with the participation of Agnieszka Mrozik, Grzegorz Wołowiec (moderator), Eliza Szybowicz, and Anna Artwińska.

In 2014:

Four panel discussion under the collective title "The Year 1966: The People’s Republic of Poland at a Turn":

1. "The Church, Gomułka, Moczar, and the Political Languages of the 1960s" (May 15, 2014), with the participation of Grzegorz Wołowiec, Michał Czaja, Bartłomiej Starnawski, and Helena Datner.

2. "Together, i.e., Separately – The Groups of Opposition to the Government in the 1960s" (October 15, 2014), with the participation of Kajetan Mojsak,  Tomasz Żukowski, Krzysztof Gajewski, and Sergiusz Kowalski.

3. "The 1960s: The Making of Normality" (November 17, 2014), with the participation of Anna Zawadzka, Eliza Szybowicz, Aleksandra Sekuła, and Renata Siemieńska.

4. "The 1960s: The Lessons of History" (December 18, 2014), with the participation of Agnieszka Mrozik, Katarzyna Chmielewska, Dobrochna Kałwa, and Anna Artwińska.

The most important and most basic form of the activity of the Center is, however, a regular seminar, which has, of the several independent researchers, made a real team. The seminar is treated not only as an opportunity to work together on the methodology and its practical applications, but above all a laboratory of new research perspectives, opening up new horizons on literary, historical, and humanistic knowledge.

ul. Nowy Świat 72, 00-330 Warszawa, e-mail: archiwum@ibl.waw.pl