Andrzej Brylak Postdoctoral Scholar Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures University of Southern California 3501 Trousdale Pkwy., THH 255K Los Angeles, CA 90089-4353

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Polish modernism, biopolitics, Jewish and Christian theology, postsecularism, medical humanities, disability studies, Gulag writings, Post-WWII Polish-Jewish history and culture, Polish literature in Israel and Polish émigré literature, psychoanalysis, totalitarianism studies.

EDUCATION

University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Polish, Russian and Lithuanian Studies ▪ Ph.D. in Slavic Studies, July 2020 ▪ Concentration: Central and Eastern European Studies Dissertation: Leo Lipski: Disabling Modernity. Adviser: Michał Paweł Markowski

Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Department of History, Institute of Jewish Studies ▪ M.A. in History with a specialization in Jewish Studies, July 2013 Thesis: Jewish Studies as a Discipline? Primary Methodological Problems.

Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Department of History, Institute of Jewish Studies ▪ B.A. in Jewish Studies, September 2011

PUBLICATIONS

Scholarship:

“Excrements of Modernization: The Scatology of Leo Lipski” Traumatic Modernities – a volume edited by Tomasz Bilczewski, to be published by the Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities of the Jagiellonian University: Forthcoming.

„Sana-tization of Polish Literature: Medicalization of Public Discourse in 1930s” – in preparation for submission to SEEJ.

„Exiled in the Promised Land: Marek Hłasko’s Israeli Writings” – in preparation for submission to Slavic Review.

“Alienacja intelektualisty—studium przypadku Hannah Arendt” (Alienation of the Intellectual – A Hannah Arendt Case Study). Jewish Studies Academic Student Journal no. 20. 2012.

„Amerykanizacja przez negację. Żydowski radykalizm w Ameryce lat 60” (Americanization by Negation. Jewish Radicalism in 1960s America). Jewish Studies Academic Student Journal no. 19. 2011. Journalism:

“Alfabet ukraińskiej rewolucji” (An ABC of the Ukrainian Revolution). Krytyka Polityczna-Dziennik Opinii, Dec. 2014.

“Siła bezużyteczności” (The Power of Uselessness). Interview with Etgar Keret. Znak Monthly, Feb. 2013.

“Wieczne poszukiwanie alternatywy” (The Endless Search for Alternatives). Interview with David Grossman. Znak Monthly, Feb. 2013.

„Rzeczywiście, fikcja?” (Fiction, Really?). Spectrum Magazine no. 1. 2011.

“Co wy tam nagraliście?” (What Is on the Record?). Reportage from Belarus. Wyborcza.pl. Dec. 2011.

„Tamtego świata już nie ma” (That World Is Gone). Interview with Hanna Krall. Mediatory.pl. Aug. 2010.

CONFERENCE PAPERS

“Electric God: Theology of Gulag According to Leo Lipski” ASEEES Annual Conference, Washington D.C., November 2020.

“Mapping Piotruś: Unconsummated Journeys of Leo Lipski.” ASEEES Annual Conference, San Francisco, November 2019.

“The Perverted Reductionism of Leo Lipski.” “Perversions”, Eight Annual Workshop on Russian Modernism, University of Illinois at Chicago, April 2019.

“Leo Lipski’s Theory of Subjectivity: The Abyss of the Sea - Where People are Dying...or Not.” “Objects and People: Symposium on life & death among things”, University of Illinois at Chicago, April 2019.

“The Prosthetic Writing of Leo Lipski.” AATSEEL 2019 Annual Conference, New Orleans, February 2019.

“Literary Representations of Interwar Poland as a Biopolitical Project.” ASEEES 2017 Annual Conference, Chicago, November 2017.

“Excrements of Modernization: The Scatology of Leo Lipski.” Fourth Annual Polish Studies Conference, University of Illinois at Chicago, April 2017.

“I, on the verge of non-existence and being: Biopolitics in Piotruś by Leo Lipski.” UIC School of Literatures, Cultural Studies and Linguistics Graduate Student Conference “Converging Narratives: Besieged and Transgressive Bodies,” University of Illinois at Chicago, March 2017.

“National Exercises in Suffering: John Paul II’s Pastoral Visits to Poland.” In/Between Conference, University of Illinois at Chicago, March 2017.

“The Question of ‘Being’ in Leo Lipski's Prose.” AATSEEL 2017 Annual Conference, San Francisco, February 2017.

“Paziński, Foer, Keret: Eastern European Spaces of Imagination in Contemporary Jewish Literature.” ASEEES-MAG Summer Convention, Lviv, June 2016.

“Exiled in the Promised Land: Marek Hłasko’s Israeli Writings.” Third Annual International Polish Jewish Studies Workshop “Doikeyt, Diaspora, Borderlands: Imagining Polish Jewish Territories” University of Illinois at Chicago, April 2016.

“A Drunken Journey from ‘Truth’ to ‘Authenticity’: The Recent History of Polish Gonzo Writing.” Graduate Students Conference in Slavic Studies “Decentering Russia: Challenging the Boundaries,” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, April 2016.

“Is Poland Unbearable While Sober? The Birth of Polish Gonzo.” In/Between Conference, University of Illinois at Chicago, February 2016

“Mythologies of Maidan.” WLGO Exploring Identities Graduate Student Conference, Iowa University, April 2015.

“Jews and Poles on the Ukrainian Barricades. A Transnational Perspective on ‘Maidan’ Counterculture.” UIC LCSL Graduate Student Conference “Converging Narratives: The Personal Meets the National,” University of Illinois at Chicago, April 2015.

“Contemporary Jewish Life in Poland. Academia - Synagogue - Museum.” Analyzing Jewish Europe Today: Perspectives from a New Generation. Second Conference of Emerging Researchers. Berlin, October 2013.

“Jewish Studies as a Discipline?” Polish Association for Jewish Studies Conference. Krakow, May 2013.

“Conflict of Memories? Polish and Jewish Historical Narratives.” VI Spring of Young History Researchers. University of Łodź, March 2013.

“Humanistic Weddings in Poland.” Kiss the Bride – Wedding Rites and Gender Politics in the Jewish and Christian Traditions. University of Potsdam, Geiger Institute. 02-09 September 2013.

“The Discourse of Contribution from Jewish and Polish Perspectives.” Krakow Jewish Studies Conference. Jagiellonian University, May 2012.

“The Jewish Minority in Lower Silesia after World War II vs. the ‘Reclaimed Lands’ Narrative.” Conference: Literature, History and Culture of Minorities in Slavic Countries. Jagiellonian University, May 2013.

CONFERENCE PAPER DISCUSSANT

Invited Discussant: Ilya Kalinin, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, “Russian Formalism: The Theory of Literary Estrangement and the Estrangement of Social Practices” SEE NEXT Seminar: East European and Northern Eurasian Crosstalk, University of Illinois at Chicago, October 2019

Discussant. Panel: “Performances and Performers in Russian and Polish Literature.” AATSEEL 2018 Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., February 2018

Discussant: Panel: “Russian Modernist Discourse and Perspectives.” AATSEEL 2018 Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., February 2018

Invited Discussant: Ekaterina Boltunova, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, "'This Is a Strife of Slavs among Themselves': Memories of the Time of Troubles and the Coronation of Nicholas I in Warsaw in 1829.” SEE NEXT Seminar: East European and Northern Eurasian Crosstalk, University of Illinois at Chicago, November 2016

Invited Discussant: Yaroslav Hrytsak, UCU, Lviv, “Center, Periphery and the Habsburg Dilemma: The Case of Ivan Franko” (1856 – 1916). SEE NEXT Seminar: East European and Northern Eurasian Crosstalk, University of Illinois at Chicago, November 2014.

PUBLISHED TRANSLATIONS

From English to Polish:

Underhill, Karen. “Bruno Schulz, E.M. Lilien and the Archaeology of Polish Jewish Modernism” Ruch Literacki, 57.6 (2017): 655-680.

Penn, Shana. „Introduction to 2nd Edition”, Solidarity’s Secret (Warsaw: WAB, 2015).

Underhill, Karen, “Re-Judaizing the Polish (Studies) Landscape: The Doikeyt Model”, Czas Kultury, Vol. 181, No. 4/2014.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

University of Southern California, Dept. of Slavic Languagues and Literatures (2020-present)

▪ SLL 122. Elementary Polish (Fall 2020) Designed and taught an online Polish language class, utilizing both synchronous and asynchronous language activities, with the special focus on online sources of language input such as TV series, You Tube videos, and social media.

University of Illinois at Chicago, Dept. of Polish, Russian and Lithuanian Studies (2014-2020)

▪ POL 115. Polish Ways of Being (Fall 2019) Designed and thought course on Polish literature, film, theater, and music that focuses on the topics of subjectivity, positionality, and identity.

▪ POL 115 Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary. Responses of Polish Culture to Daily Life Struggles (Fall 2018). Designed and taught course on Polish literature, film, theater, and architecture that focuses on art’s capacity to transform our perception of the everyday.

▪ POL 115 The Aesthetics of the Authoritarian Turn in Contemporary Poland (Summer 2018). Designed and taught. UIC Summer Study Abroad Program in Krakow - Re-Negotiating State and Society in Contemporary Poland. By analyzing graffiti, fashion, music, comic books, theater productions, and demonstration banners, students explore aesthetic components of the Polish political landscape.

▪ POL 130 Polish Émigré Literature (Spring 2018). Designed and taught course on the global aspect of Polish literature as well as concepts connected with writing abroad, including: emigration, exile, immigration, diaspora, internal emigration, nostalgia, cosmopolitism, and assimilation. Readings and instruction in Polish.

▪ POL 115 Polish Arts and Culture – Between the Individual and the National Body (Summer 2017). Designed and taught course on the evolution of Polish culture from the medieval period to the present day, with an emphasis on discourses of the body. The course traces the process of the consolidation of the national body and responses to it.

▪ POL 321 Polish School of Reportage – Between Literature and Fact (Spring 2017). Designed and taught. The class presents Polish creative non-fiction as a school of writing from the 1960’s to the present, analyzing Polish reportage through the categories of truth, authenticity, artistic license, subjectivity, and narration.

▪ POL 101-104 Polish Language (2014-2018) Co-designed and taught introductory and intermediate-level Polish language classes in both traditional and blended formats (the latter combining face-to-face with online instruction and assignments).

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES AND SERVICE

Co-Editor, researcher, “World History of Polish Literature”, a volume fully sponsored by the grant of the National Program for the Advancement of Humanities, Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, to be published by the Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities of the Jagiellonian University: Forthcoming.

Organizer, “Political Ecology in Soviet and Post-Soviet Literature”, graduate seminar with Ilya Kalinin, Saint Petersburg State University, Chicago, October 2019.

Participant, "Russian Empire/Soviet Union Through the Lens of Global and New Imperial Histories”, graduate summer school organized by Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, and The Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Tyumen University, July 2019

Participant, “The Body as a Conductor of the Attention”, 2-Day Intensive Masterclass with Russian theater director Maxim Didenko. University of Illinois at Chicago, October 2018.

Co-Organizer, UIC Slavic Department Seminar in Biopolitics, Bainbridge MI, September 2018.

Research trip: “Emigration Archive”, Toruń University, fully funded by UIC Chancellor Graduate Research Award – Research on Leo Lipski: correspondence, documents, personal papers, Toruń, July 2018.

Department Representative. UIC Graduate Student Council, August 2014- May 2017

Assistant Organizer. Book talk with Olga Tokarczuk, author of Księgi Jakubowe (Books of Jacob), University of Illinois at Chicago, April 2016.

Assistant Organizer. Third Annual International Polish Jewish Studies Workshop - “Doikeyt, Diaspora, Borderlands: Imagining Polish Jewish Territories,” University of Illinois at Chicago, April 2016.

Krakow and Galicia Region Representative, Program Assistant. Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland Foundation. Organized educational tours of Jewish history and culture in Poland for academic summer programs and heritage tour groups. Designed and guided historical tours, and conducted educational workshops and genealogy research. August 2013– August 2014

Editor-in-Chief. Jewish Studies Student Academic Journal, Jagiellonian University, Krakow. Edited and reviewed article submissions, wrote original articles and editorials, collaborated with authors. June 2011–June 2013

Educator. POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw. Conducted peer encounter workshops that brought Israeli and Polish high school students into conversation. August 2011–September 2012

PUBLIC and GUEST LECTURES

Discussant. Book talk with Michał Paweł Markowski, author of Wojny nowoczesnych plemion. Spór o rzeczywistość w epoce populizmu (The Wars of Modern Tribes. Fighting for Reality in the Age of Populism), University of Illinois at Chicago, November 2019.

Discussant. Art at War: The International Avant-Garde and World War I. Roundtable Discussion, UIC Honors College, Chicago, November 2018.

Discussant. Book talk with Marek Bieńczyk, author of Przezroczystość (Transparency), University of Illinois at Chicago, November 2018.

Guest Speaker. Educational Strategies in Teaching Polish/Jewish History to American Students, Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland Foundation, Warsaw, Poland, July 2018.

Discussant. Book talk with Michał Paweł Markowski, author of Kiwka (The Dribble), University of Illinois at Chicago, November 2016.

Discussant. Door Posts: Mezuzah Traces and Affixing New Mezuzot. Contemporary Jewish Life in Poland. Roundtable Discussion, Jewish Culture Festival, Krakow, Poland, June 2016.

Guest Speaker. Nostalgia-Fashion-Duty? Non-Jewish Engagement in Jewish Life in Poland, Hofstra Hillel – The Center for Jewish Life on Campus, Hofstra University, April 2016.

Moderator and organizer. Ukraine’s Future after the Maidan. Roundtable Discussion, “Znak Monthly Forum”, Krakow, February 2014.

AWARDS and GRANTS

Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation Academic Travel Grant to Russia, 2019

UIC Provost Award for Graduate Research, 2018

UIC Chancellor Graduate Research Award, 2018

Graduate Student Council Presenter Award, 2018

Graduate College Presenter Award, 2017

Graduate Student Council Travel Award, 2015

Hejna Fund Scholarship Grant, 2014

LANGUAGES

Polish (native speaker), English (near-native), Russian (fluent), Hebrew and Yiddish (reading competency).

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS and AFFILIATIONS

AATSEEL (American Association for the Teaching of Slavic and East European Languages), Member

ASEEES (Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies), Member