Tag Archive: events

Year 2023/2024

November 9: Scared Sick: Medicine and the Gothic Tradition

November 9, 2023

Join Weird Research Group for the second meeting of Weird Medicine Series! This talk will be grounded in the foundational Romantic period and will explain ways in which Gothic works reflected some of the most controversial medical pursuits, playing out their possibilities and dangers.

Year 2023/2024

December 19: Body in Ruins: Brandon Cronenberg’s Cinema of Exhaustion

December 19, 2023

Join Weird Research Group for the another meeting of Weird Medicine Series! This talk will focus on “the principle of somatic wholeness,” that is the idea that the body is to be “understood as a sovereign self: closed, contained, unified, and under rational control”

Year 2023/2024

January 25: New Technologies And Their Impact – From The Psychiatrist’s POV

January 25, 2024

Join Weird Research Group for the fifth meeting of Weird Medicine Series! The talk with psychiatrist Joachim Budny will serve as an occasion to exchange perspectives and information about the impact of new technologies on our everyday lives and well-being while staying close to this year’s theme of WEIRD MEDICINE.

Year 2023/2024

January 23: A New Life: Memory, Identity, and Ethics of Mind Manipulation in To The Moon 

January 23, 2024

Join Weird Research Group for the fourth meeting of Weird Medicine Series! During the meeting, we will take a closer look at the game To The Moon, which will provide a starting point for a discussion about memory, ethics, and the future of psychology.

Year 2023/2024

October 30: Weird Halloween: Normal Again? The Portrayal of Mental Health(Care) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

October 30, 2023

Join Weird Fictions Research Group for the first Weird Medicine meeting this semester about classic 90s TV show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

American Studies Colloquium Series

May 25: English Language Bias and the Generalizability Problem in the Face of Global Linguistic Diversity

May 25, 2023

According to different sources, there are between 6,000 to 8,000 languages spoken in the world today. However, many academic fields tend to rely on English as a model language and do not question the generalizability of findings from studies done with English speakers. This talkwill illustrate how English is in some respects unusual and how focusing on it exclusively might provide a biased picture of language and the human mind.

American Studies Colloquium Series

May 18: Understanding Appalachian Otherness

May 18, 2023

The Appalachian region of the US is a place surrounded in myth and stereotypes. This presentation explains the various scholarly and popular understandings of Appalachia, contrasting the definition of the region based upon geographic, economic, and cultural criteria, and discussing the differences between Northern and Southern Appalachia.

Year 2022/2023

May 9: Call of the Deep: Mermaids in Film and Fiction

May 9, 2023

We’ll talk mermaids old and new. The ones with lovely fins and the ones with sharp teeth. We’ll journey through the unruly waters of Greek mythology, medieval (AND communist!) Warsaw and the Mariana Trench. We’ll talk mermaid taxonomy and history. We’ll talk about Mami Wata and the Little Mermaid. And we’ll talk how natureculture continuum and gender binary are traversed and challenged through the immensely popular figures of mer-people.

Year 2022/2023

April 27: Sex under Western Gaze

April 27, 2023

Did women have better sex – or better anything – under socialism? What do Eastern Europeans think about how Ghodsee’s book “Why Women Have Better Sex under Socialism” presents “our” history? Join Dr. Ludmiła Janion to talk over these issues with Erasmus+ visiting scholar Prof. Kornelia Slavova.

Year 2022/2023

April 25: Blood, Guts, Quirks and Frames: Greek Myths in Video Games

April 25, 2023

Nearly three thousand years ago, in ancient Greece, mythological and semi-legendary reigned in people’s hearts: heroes, demi-gods, monsters and more. Nowadays, all these myths are still, if not more, popular. This lecture will take a look at how contemporary video games take inspiration from ancient myths, often giving in return not only better visuals, but new depth, new meaning, even whole new stories.

Year 2022/2023

April 20: Appropriations of Emily Dickinson: the Persistence of the Poet

April 20, 2023

Join us for a meeting with Charles Holdefer, the author of several novels and numerous short stories, one of which won the Pushcart Prize. We will speak about his most recent novel, “Don’t Look at Me” (2022), in which the protagonist discovers a cache of unknown letters from Emily Dickinson to her lover which includes a major, hitherto unknown poem.

Year 2022/2023

April 13: Meet author Menachem Kaiser and translator Monika Skowron

April 13, 2023

It is our pleasure to invite you to the meeting with Menachem Kaiser, the author of a critically acclaimed, award-winning debut memoir “Plunder” and Monika Skowron, the book’s translator into Polish. The unusual focus on property is a way for the author to critique rote, exploitative, and excessively sentimental “third generation” memoirs written by descendants of Holocaust survivors visiting the “old country”.

Year 2022/2023

March 30: Between Euterpe and Aurora: How the Greek Myths Live in Contemporary Music

March 28, 2023

Ancient mythologies are alive in the contemporary world and continue to inspire artists and musicians. This lecture will offer a look into the interpretations and reinterpretations of Greek mythos in contemporary popular (or not-so-popular) music. Together, we will listen to the reconstructions of ancient hymns and wonder why so people from different countries and cultures still listen to the Greek tales from thousands of years ago?

Year 2022/2023

31 marca: Co zrobić z Lydią Tár? Pokaz i dyskusja wokół filmu Todda Fielda

March 31, 2023

Nominowany do 6 Oscarów film Todda Fielda z brawurową rolą Cate Blanchett to prowokacyjne spojrzenie na współczesną kulturę i społeczne konflikty. Zapraszamy do rozmowy, w której skupimy się na politycznych interpretacjach “Tár” w kontekście przemian amerykańskiej wrażliwości.

American Studies Colloquium Series

March 28: The Flashy Girl from Flushing: The Nanny and its Influence on American Culture

March 28, 2023

During the lecture, David Slucki of Monash University is going to investigate the recent upsurge in interest in the iconic CBS sitcom “The Nanny” and what it has to teach us about contemporary American Jewish life, and American life more broadly. “The Nanny” marks a turning point for American Jewish culture, popular culture representations of Jews, and particularly Jewish women.