We are pleased to announce an online lecture by
Tadeusz Sławek
(University of Silesia)

‘Like a Thief in the Night’: Pandemic and the Culture of Healing

This lecture is going to be the a part
of the 2020/2021 Fall Edition of the
American Studies Colloquium Series.

Thursday, November 26, 2020
at 4:45 p.m

You can get 2 OZN points for participating in this event.
Check how to collect OZN points online.

poster by Paulina Derecka (@paulinaderecka)

Where?

This lecture will be streamed online. To attend, click the button below or enter https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88615359780 into your browser, and join the meeting.

What?

In 1987 the Australian rock band Midnight Oil soared high on the world charts with their song Beds Are Burning. Its message was an appeal to recognize the rights of the original tribal populations of Australia as well as a call for more respect for the natural environment. Borrowing the Midnight Oil’s rhetorical concept, it is just to claim that today we are in a situation in which our beds are burning in a nearly literal sense. Air pollution submerging cities in clouds of smog, democracies wavering all over the world, mounting nationalisms and waves of chauvinistic and wall-building politics, over a million dead of a virus the existence of which many people do not seem to admit.

The pandemic is a virus, but it is more than this: it is a dramatic symptom of the malaise of the way of life, a sharp curve which we cannot fail to negotiate. Starting from the 17th century time of the plague, we shall be asking questions how to survive the crisis, how to live on, and how to think the change without which our future is bleak. It is a particularly important mission of the humanities to respond to the challenge of the catastrophe; respond with hope, expressly stated by Hölderlin: “But where the danger is, also grows the saving power.” Looking at various texts (from 17 th century London to Louise Glück) will be trying (no more than trying) to find this “saving power” and grope towards the “culture of healing”.

Who?

Tadeusz Sławek, professor of comparative literature at the University of Silesia, between 1996 and 2002 the Rector of this University. With the double bass player Bogdan Mizerski performs essays for voice and double bass. Most important publications: The Typewriter. On Jacques Derrida’s Theory of Literature (with Tadeusz Rachwał) (1992), Calling of Jonah. Problems of Literary Voice (with Donald Wesling) (1995), Man, World, Friendship in the Works of William Blake (2001), Revelations of Gloucester (2003, Grasping. H.D. Thoreau and the Community of the World (2009), Reversing the World. Sentences from Shakespeare (2012), Departing (2015), Never without the Rest. On the Urgency of Incompleteness(2018).

Year 2024/2025

10 Grudnia: Odmieńczość: Obywatelstwo Seksualne i Archiwum – Premiera Książki

November 25, 2024

Zapraszamy na dyskusję z udziałem prof. Tomasza Basiuka, prof. Agnieszki Kościańskiej i dra Jędrzeja Burszty, redaktorów książki “Odmieńczość: obywatelstwo seksualne i archiwum”, która ukaże się nakładem Wydawnictw Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Rozmowę poprowadzi dr Ludmiła Janion.

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 5: Reinventing the Past to Change the Future: Alt-History and Reactionary Futurity

November 25, 2024

This presentation examines “alt-history” as a mode of reactionary worldbuilding, with a focus on how far-right influencers use alternate histories to reshape public understandings of the past and galvanize political action. Through examples like Tucker Carlson’s Patriot Purge and Dinesh D’Souza’s Death of a Nation, the talk explores how reactionary narratives blend science fictional techniques with conspiracy fantasies to legitimize authoritarian politics. The discussion includes a genealogy of the right-wing myth of “liberal fascism,” tracing its evolution and role in contemporary ideological landscapes shaped by historical revisionism and speculative worldbuilding.

American Studies Colloquium Series

November 28: Soviet-Born Jewish Literature between North America and Germany

November 22, 2024

In this conversation, Stuart Taberner (University of Leeds) and Karolina Krasuska (University of Warsaw) will explore some of the parallels and contrasts between the experiences of Soviet Jews who migrated to Germany and the United States in successive waves since the 1960s. Specifically, they will examine the literary production of these cohorts of Soviet Jewish migrants, relating to arrival in the destination country, the reconfiguration of Jewish identity, gender, and Holocaust memory. Following a brief introduction to the historical, sociological, and literary context in Germany and the USA, Stuart and Karolina will engage in a discussion of key points of comparisons and difference.

Year 2024/2025

November 21: “House of Horrors: Familial Intimacies in Contemporary American Horror Fiction” Author’s Meeting

November 19, 2024

Join us on November 21, 2024 for an author’s meeting with Dr. Agnieszka Kotwasińska about her book “House of Horrors: Familial Intimacies in Contemporary American Horror Fiction” published last year by the University of Wales Press. Dr. Kotwasińska will be joined by Dr. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, and the event will be moderated by Dr. Jędrzej Burszta.

Year 2024/2025

November 20: ‘A Plane out of Phase’ – The Dark Continuance of the Gothic 1980s

November 19, 2024

Weird Fictions Research Group invites you to join for a fantastic (no pun intended) lecture by our guest, Dr. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn from Manchester Metropolitan University! This lecture asks you to consider the dark return of the Gothic 1980s in contemporary culture. Drawing upon ideas and examples of sequelisation, IP branding, apparatus theory, YouTube video curation, nostalgic programming, weird TV, and music, and the confluence of such forms in streaming series including Stranger Things and the current media adoption of Dark MAGA, this lecture invites you to examine the toxicity of the rhetoric of restorative projections and to query its undervalued reflective nostalgia as imagined onscreen to reclaim the future from the precarious dark present.