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Centre for Cultural and Literary Studies of Communism
Room 138
Office hours: Wednesdays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.; Room 131.
Members of the Center:
Chair: Dr. Grzegorz Wołowiec
Dr. Katarzyna Chmielewska
Associate Professor Krzysztof Gajewski
Professor Emeritus Michał Głowiński
Dr. Kajetan Mojsak
Dr. Agnieszka Mrozik
Mr. Paweł Rams, M.A., a doctoral student at the Institute
Dr. Anna Sobieska
Mr. Bartłomiej Starnawski, M.A.
Dr. Tomasz Żukowski, M.A.
Members of the Center from Outside of the Institute:
Dr. Anna Artwińska, the University of Hamburg
Dr. Aranzazu Calderón Puerta, the University of Warsaw
Dr. Aleksandra Sekuła
Dr. Anna Zawadzka, the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences
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.
Department of the Dictionary of the 16th-Century Polish Language (IBL PAN Toruń branch)
TORUŃ TEAM
ul. Piekary 8
87-100 Toruń
Tel. 566 210 331
email:
Staff members:
Department Chair: Dr. Patrycja Potoniec
Dr. Ewa Cybulska-Bohuszewicz
Ms. Aleksandra Ćwiklińska, M.A.
Ms. Anna Nath-Dokurno, M.A.
Mr. Krzysztof Opaliński, M.A.
Ms. Małgorzata Pierzgalska, M.A.
Ms. Lucyna Wilczewska, M.A
Mr. Piotr Małek
Dr. Damian Kaja
Retired scholars who participate in the activities of the Department:
Dr. Maria Frankowska
Ms. Anna Karasiowa, M.A.
Ms. Małgorzata Nobis, M.A.
Ms. Lucyna Woronczakowa, M.A.
About the Department:
Created in 1949, on the initiative of Professor Maria Renata Mayenowa, the Department consists of two units: one located in Toruń and one in Wrocław. The editorial work was first directed by Professor Franciszek Pepłowski (d. March 20, 2009). Currently, it is Professor Krzysztof Mrowcewicz who is in charge of all the projects and Dr. Patrycja Potoniec is the executive editor’s deputy.
So far, there have been thirty six volumes of Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku [A Dictionary of the Polish Language in the 16th Century] published (from "A" to "Roztyrkność"). The material basis of the dictionary is a collection of sixteenth-century texts representing, as much as possible, all forms of writing: verse, prosaic, continuous, dialogical, rhetorical, scientific, narrative, etc. They are texts of different social origins and varying degrees of literariness, coming from all areas of Poland of the sixteenth century. All the words appearing in those texts are tackled except for local nad personal names. The collected file has more than eight million cards (approx. 100,000 entries). Unedited materials are arranged alphabetically and made available to researchers.
For more information see the Dictionary’s site: www.spxvi.edu.pl
Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku [A Dictionary of the Polish Language in the 16th Century]: vols. 1-36 (from "A" to "Roztyrkność") – its electronic version at Kujawsko-Pomorska Biblioteka Cyfrowa.
Department of Current Bibliography (IBL PAN Poznań branch)
Staff Members
Head: Beata Domosławska, Senior information and documentation specialist, email:
Deputy Head: Tomasz Umerle, PhD, Assistant Professor, email:
Paulina Czwordon-Lis, PhD, email:
Izabela Hojdis, MA, email:
Beata Koper, PhD, email:
Beata Latosińska, MA, email:
Tomasz Mioduszewski, MA, email:
Ewa Pakalska, MA, email:
Karolina Przysiecka, MA, email:
Cezary Rosiński, PhD, email:
Małgorzata Szkudlarska, MA, email:
Barbara Wachek, MA, email:
Aleksandra Włoszczyńska, MA, email:
Nikodem Wołczuk, BA, email:
Co-workers:
Patryk Hubar, MA, email:
Research areas:
- bibliography
- documentation studies
- auxiliary sciences of literary studies
- digital research infrastructures for literary studies
The focus of work of the Department is the Polish Literary Bibliography – an online database of annotated and constantly updated bibliographical information on Polish literature, theatre, radio, film and television. The PBL documents books published in Poland in Polish and other languages as well as books published abroad in Polish and other languages when they pertain to Polish writers or when their author is Polish.
The “Polish Literary Bibliography" publishing series has been printed since 1954, with 45 annuals published by 2000, containing materials for the years 1944/45–1988. The printed volumes of the PBL have been digitalized and they are available in the Digital Repository of Scientific Institutes.
Since around 2001 and starting with data for 1989 the bibliography has been published only in a digital form accessible online. Recently, the team is working on the sources from the years 2004-2012.
Links: Polish Literary Bibliography, Polish Literary Bibliography [beta version of new webpage], Facebook, Twitter / X
Department of Contemporary Literature Documentation
Room 127; Tel. (22) 6572-838
office hours: Tuesdays 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Members of the Department:
Chair: Ms. Marlena Sęczek, M.A.
Associate Professor Beata Dorosz
PhD Alicja Szałagan
Ms. Katarzyna Batora, M.A.
PhD Barbara Tyszkiewicz,
PhD Grażyna Pawlak
Associate Professor Ewa Kołodziejczyk
PhD Weronika Szulik
Retired scholars who participate in the activities of the Department:
Associate Professor Ewa Głębicka
PhD Maria Kotowska-Kachel
Ms. Barbara Marzęcka, M.A.
About the Department:
Bibliographical and documentary work has been carried out at the Institute since its inception, treating the creation of the Polish studies apparatus for analyzing literature from the Middle Ages to the present as one of the basic directions of activity. The Department has operated under various names since 1954. It was first led by Professor Ewa Korzeniewska, then, from 1966 to 1992, by Professor Jadwiga Czachowska, and since 1993 by Professor Ewa Głębicka. The mainstream of its activities consisted of wide range bibliographic and biobibliographic projects within the twentieth century, and thanks to Professor Czachowska’s methodological studies a new formula of literary documentation has been developed as a separate area of literary study. At present, the Department continues its documentation work, as well as historico-literary and editorial projects about twentieth- and twenty-first century writers and the literary life during this period.
The Department’s subsequent research teams worked on the preparation of biobibliographical dictionaries of contemporary writers, which included Słownik współczesnych pisarzy polskich [A Dictionary of Contemporary Polish Writers], series I, ed. by Ewa Korzeniewska, vols. 1-4 (1963-1966); series II, ed. by Jadwiga Czachowska, vols. 1-3 (1977-1980); and Współcześni polscy pisarze i badacze literatury [Contemporary Polish Writers and Literary Scholars], ed. by Jadwiga Czachowska and Alicja Szałagan, vols. 1-10 (1994-2007). Also, the Department’s researchers put together a bibliography Literatura polska i teatr w latach II wojny światowej [Polish Literature and Theater during the Second World War], authored by Jadwiga Czachowska, Maria Krystyna Maciejewska, and Barbara Tyszkiewicz (vols. 1-3; 1983-1986), and a section on modernity of Słownik pseudonimów pisarzy polskich XV w.-1970 [A Dictionary of Polish Writers’ Pseudonyms, 15th Century-1970], a collective volume edited by Jadwiga Czachowska, vols. 1-4 (1994-1996).
In 2011, a volume of a new compendium was published – the dictionary Polscy pisarze i badacze literatury przełomu XX i XXI wieku [Polish Writers and Literary Scholars at the Turn of the 21st Century] edited by Alicja Szałagan. Produced in the Dutch system, the subsequent volumes will be published at intervals of several years. It is predicted that the volumes will be placed gradually on the website of the Institute of Literary Research, where it will be updated.
Individual works on biographical and bibliographical monographs of writers have also been produced in the Department. Among others, the monographs cover the following writers: Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński (by Barbara Winklowa), Władysław Broniewski (by Feliksa Lichodziejewska), Leon Kruczkowski (by Jadwiga Kaczyńska), Maria Kuncewiczowa (by Alicja Szałagan), Aleksander Świętochowski (by Maria Brykalska), and Gabriela Zapolska (by Jadwiga Czachowska). A separate publication is the lexicon Grupy literackie w Polsce w 1945-1989 [Literary Groups in Poland, 1945-1989] edited by Ewa Głębicka. Currently, studies are being prepared on Maria Dąbrowska (Ewa Głębicka), Julia Dickstein-Wieleżyńska (Mariola Wilczak), Jan Lechoń (Beata Dorosz), Jan Parandowski (Grażyna Pawlak), Antoni Słonimski (Alicja Szałagan), Adam Ważyk (Katarzyna Batora), Jerzy Zawieyski (Barbara Tyszkiewicz), as well as on the literary life of New York emigrants from 1941 to 1969 (Beata Dorosz).
A separate field of research includes editorial works devoted to writers’ diaries and correspondence. At present, the following projects are carried out: (1) the correspondence between Maria Dąbrowska and Stanisław Stempowski (Ewa Głębicka); (2) the writings and journalism of Julia Dickstein-Wieleżyńska (Mariola Wilczak) and Jan Kasprowicz (Roman Loth, Mariola Wilczak); (3) the letters of Mieczysław Grydzewski, Jan Lechoń and Kazimierz Wierzyński (Beata Dorosz); and (4) the diaries of Jan Parandowski (Grażyna Pawlak) and Jerzy Zagórski (Barbara Marzęcka).
For research purposes, the Department makes available unpublished bibliographic materials that were prepared in the 1950s and 1960s. They include, among other things, bibliographic records of the contents of the selected left-wing periodicals from the interwar period, bibliographic records of the published bibliography Literatura polska i teatr w latach II wojny światowej [Polish Literature and Theatre During the Second World War] (in the order different from the published one), and the typescript of the Chronicles of literary life, 1944-1969. The Department also grants access to the records of the literary contents of Polish periodicals from the nineteenth century to the year 1939 (the so-called Adam Bar file lists ca. 800,000 items). In 2012, on the basis of the file, the Department began work on the creation of the database, which is part of a long-term project "The Institute of Literary Research Integrated Bibliographic Database (e-ZBB)."
Access to the Archive – containing surveys of the writers included in biobibliographic dictionaries and the dictionary of pseudonyms (its contemporary section) – is possible with the consent of Chair of the Department.
Department of Theoretical Poetics and Semiotics of Culture
Room 128; Tel. (22) 6572-701
Office hours: Tuesdays 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Members of the Department:
Chair: Professor Jan Kordys
Professor Jacek Leociak
Associate Professor Grzegorz Grochowski
Dr. Magdalena Szczypiorska-Chrzanowska
Other scholars who participate in the activities of the Department:
Professor Teresa Dobrzyńska-Janusz
Professor Danuta Danek
Dr. Dorota Urbańska
More information:
On the history of the Department of Theoretical Poetics
Literary Theory: Concepts and their Contexts (cooperation with the Institute of Literature, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
About the Department:
Research conducted by the members of the Department focuses on developing methods for the analysis of literary works defined as complex sign structures built out of language material and subjected to different conventions of discourse. This type of research belongs to descriptive poetics and has a clear linguistic and semiotic profile. It uses analytical categories from various branches of linguistics: semantics, pragmatics, stylistics and text, and discourse theory. Interpretation-oriented studies apply the latest methods of literary analysis.
Research on the text structure, discourse theory, and semantics of literary expression – the problems of metaphor, in particular – is being carried out especially vigorously. Work is also underway in the fields of semiotics and neurosemiotics and, in recent years, a line of research on the textual representation of the Holocaust has been developed. Apart from the inquiries concentrated on the mechanisms of language communication, the Department also conducts many interpretation studies devoted to various contemporary writers. In addition, the Department’s research represents major achievements in the field of verse studies.
The Department – under different names and in the organizational forms that were modified a few times – has existed since the founding of the Institute of Literary Research. Until 1981, the creator and manager of the team was Professor Maria Renata Mayenowa. After her retirement, Professor Lucylla Pszczołowska became the manager. And since 1993, the team has been headed by Professor Teresa Dobrzyńska. Scholars who have been affiliated with the Department for many years include Danuta Danek, Zofia Florczak, Elżbieta Janus, Zdzisława Kopczyńska, Dorota Urbańska, and Anna Wierzbicka.
In the last decade, the team’s record of publications has been enriched by Teresa Dobrzyńska’s volume of essays Tekst – styl – poetyka [Text – Style – Poetics] (Krakow 2003), as well as by such books as: (1) Kategorie antropologiczne i tożsamość narracyjna [Anthropological Categories and Narrative Identity] by Jan Kordys (Krakow 2006); (2) Odmiany dyskursu. Semiotyka życia publicznego w Polsce po 1989 roku [Varieties of Discourse: Semiotics of Public Life in Poland After 1989] by Zbigniew Kloch (Wroclaw 2006); (3) Znaczenie wyboru formy wiersza [The Importance of Choosing the Verse Form] by Zdzisława Kopczyńska, Teresa Dobrzyńska, and Lucylla Pszczołowska (Warsaw 2007); (4) Ocalony w gmachu wiersza. O poezji Stanisława Barańczaka (Saved in the Edifice of Verse: On the Poetry of Stanisław Barańczak] by Jerzy Kandziora (Warsaw 2008); and (5) Doświadczenia graniczne. Studia o dwudziestowiecznych formach reprezentacji [Borderline Experiences: Studies of Twentieth-Century Representation Forms] by Jacek Leociak (Warsaw 2009).
The Department collaborates with the Institute of Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Along with the Institute, the Department has organized a series of conferences, including "Memory and Text: Cognitive and Cultural Aspects" (Sofia, June 16-17, 2003), "Word and Image: Iconicity in Literary Communication" (Sofia, September 19-20, 2005), "Observation and Meaning" (Sofia, September 25-26, 2008), and "Similarity and Difference: The Problem of Identity" (Sofia, September 16-17, 2012). This collaboration has resulted in the publications of edited volumes. Moreover, the Department has maintained regular scholarly contacts with Czech researchers of discourse (Czech Language Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague). For many years, the Department was also an organizer of the symposiums in the series "Comparative Slavic Metrics." The members of the Department participate in many scholarly conferences organized by other institutions.
Department of Historical Poetics
Room 128
Ph. +48 (22) 657-27-01
Scholarly meetings: Wednesday 12.30-14.30
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department’s scholarly meetings have been moved to the online platform. Further information on the subject, dates and possibilities of participation is provided by prof. Andrzej Karcz:
Staff Members:
Head: Magdalena Rembowska-Płuciennik, PhD, Associate Professor (
Professor Włodzimierz Bolecki
Tamara Brzostowska-Tereszkiewicz, PhD, Associate Professor
Marta Bukowiecka, PhD
Andrzej Karcz, PhD, Associate Professor
Agnieszka Kluba, PhD, Associate Professor
Maciej Maryl, PhD
Magdalena Rembowska-Płuciennik, PhD, Associate Professor
Beata Śniecikowska, PhD, Associate Professor
Professor Aleksandra Okopień-Sławińska (professor emeritus)
Professor Zdzisław Łapiński (professor emeritus)
Professor Ryszard Nycz (professor emeritus)
Research Areas:
- Research interests of the members of the Department of Historical Poetics concern diverse literary genres and paraliterary forms in various historical and literary periods (mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries). They also represent various research methods. Research areas include:
- general issues of the humanities and philology, discourses and problems of modernity (R. Nycz, W. Bolecki);
- scholarly editing and archival research (W. Bolecki and a team led by A. Kluba);
- comparative literary modernisms, literary and cultural translation studies (T. Brzostowska-Tereszkiewicz);
- relations between literature and visual arts and different types of visual literature (B. Śniecikowska)
- narratology, reading and reception of literature, the specificity of the reception of printed and digital literature, and digital genre varieties (M. Rembowska-Płuciennik);
- traditions of 20th century Polish literary studies (A. Karcz);
- changes in the concept of literariness and non-literariness (M. Bukowiecka)
- digital humanities and the development of modern research infrastructure (M. Maryl)
Current collective research projects:
“The Collected Writings of Janusz Sławiński" (“Monuments of Polish Philosophical, Theological and Social Thought of the 20th and 21st Centuries", Ministry of Science and Higher Education). Project leader: Professor Agnieszka Kluba.
The aim of the project entitled “The Collected Writings of Janusz Sławiński" is the first complete critical edition of the intellectual legacy of Professor Janusz Sławiński (1934–2014), one of the most outstanding Polish humanists and philosophers of literature of the 20th century. His work performed for more than half a century not only determined the history of modern theoretical and literary thought, establishing the Polish variant of Structuralism and redefining the native hermeneutic tradition, but also significantly influenced the development of the life of the Polish intelligentsia for many decades. The authors of the project intend to emphasize the importance of the role that Janusz Sławiński played in the Polish humanities as a person who in an unprecedented way combined the competences of a scholar with the ability to diligently formulate cognitive issues that go beyond the domain of literary research and beyond the field of humanities towards general scientific issues. Janusz Sławiński, professor of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Polish Academy of Skills, the co-founder of, among others, The Society for the Support and Propagation of Sciences and the Foundation for Polish Science, was an outstanding methodologist and experienced inspirer and organizer of scientific life who, until the end of his life, was reflecting on fundamental issues of the self-awareness of modern science, primarily those related to the ethos of the scientist’s profession, resulting from his social relationships and interactions. He also considered the issue of the place of the humanities within the domain of sciences, both its specificity and belonging to the scientific model of knowledge, as well as the role of threats to science resulting from ideological tendencies. The end result of the work of the four-person team will be a model critical edition of Janusz Sławiński’s Collected Writings, made public in open access at the Digital Repository of the Institute of Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences a year after the traditional publication.