Just published: Polish Literature in Transformation

This volume consists of an introduction and 17 essays, that emerged from the conference on ‘Polish Literature Since 1989’ held at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies in November 2011. 

The main theme of the book is the transformation, systemic and cultural, that Poland has undergone since the collapse of communism in 1989 and its reflection in literary works and in the ways that literary scholars have reacted to change, both in Poland and in the West. To what extent, for example, has the import of Western theory after 1989 influenced literary and cultural studies and has there been a reaction against this?

Themes addressed include the changing conceptions of Polish nationhood and identity or of so-called Polishness; the impact of European integration; the effects of migration; revised conceptions of the foreign or the marginal, and new understandings of what is understood by émigré or emigrant literature; sensitivity to issues of gender and sexual identity, as well as the impact of feminism and queer studies; the huge impact of revived interest in the Jewish heritage, in Holocaust memory, and in Polish-Jewish relations.

As well as Ursula Phillips, Urszula Chowaniec and Katarzyna Zechenter – all UCL SSEES academics, there are contributions from Knut Grimstad, Paul Vickers and Uilleam Blacker - all at one time SSEES students.

Polish Literature in Transformation edited by Ursula Phillips with the assistance of Knut Andreas Grimstad and Kris Van Heuckelom. LIT Verlag 2013. ISBN 978-3-643-90289-4