Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Room 131; Tel. (22) 6572-876

Members of the Department:
Chair: Associate Professor  Magdalena Rudkowska  -  Wednesdays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Professor Grażyna Borkowska  -  Wednesdays 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Associate Professor Marek Pąkciński  - Wednesdays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Dr. Bartłomiej Szleszyński  - Wednesdays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Dr. Iwona Wiśniewska  -  Wednesdays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Dr. Agnieszka Bąbel  - Wednesdays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Dr. Agata Grabowska-Kuniczuk. - Wednesdays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Dr. Aleksandra Błasińska  - Wednesdays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

About the Department:
The Department – initially, a research team – has existed at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences since March 1981. Between 1981 and 1998, its Chair was Professor Janusz Maciejewski, not only the formal director, but also the creator of important conferences and edited volumes (e.g., on the antipositivist change in Polish culture at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on the private and public spheres in the second half of the nineteenth century, and on the transformations of the idea of Polishness in the late nineteenth century).

The Department is engaged in a comprehensive analysis of the state of Polish culture during the years 1864-1914. The starting year requires no comment. But shifting the boundary of the epoch as far as the outbreak of World War I results from a complex generation layout: the simultaneous presence of the positivists and the modernists in culture at the turn of the century and during the first decade of the twentieth century.

The Department’s specific research tasks for the coming years relate to:
• The concepts of the nineteenth century’s essence understood as a community extending beyond epochs;
• The relationship between the political situation of the post-January Uprising era and the state of culture and the ideological attitudes of specific writers (Kraszewski and Russia, Prus’s "philosophy of life", etc.);
• The projects connected with the Archive of Eliza Orzeszkowa (the writer’s life and work calendar, an edition of her letters, etc.);
• The Jewish question in the nineteenth century;
• A vast panorama of the epoch consisting of various (not necessarily scientific and realistic) inspirations: philosophical, ideological, and artistic;
• The so-called antipositivist turn, the modernist and Nietzschean movements.