Between East and West: A Critical Mapping of Polish Culture

SLAVIC 175 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

This course will introduce you to the history of Polish literature and Polish cultural imagination, focusing on several questions that remain resonant to this day, such as Poland’s entangled relations with Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Jewish, German, and Russian cultures. Critical discussions of Polish literature and film (including readings of Polish Nobel Prize winners: Tokarczuk, Szymborska, Milosz, and Sienkiewicz) will be confronted with Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Yiddish texts. Polish culture offers examples of both the colonized and colonizing voices, offering unique insights into the study of racialization, forced displacement, dual identity, complicity, resistance, and genocide. We will discuss why Poland’s national epic poem begins with the words “Lithuania! My homeland!” and was written in France by a poet born in the area of today’s Belarus. We will consider East-Central Europe’s often-changing borders, contested memories, and the ways in which the region’s complicated past is reworked and discussed today.

Note: All readings in English. It is an introductory course – no background in Polish literature is required. Students who take this course are eligible to apply for the Slavic Department’s Jurzykowski grants for the summer language study in Poland.

Course Notes

No prior knowledge of Poland required. All readings will be in English.