Marginal Modernists

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course introduces twentieth-century modernist Polish literature through figures, identities, and perspectives that have so far been marginalised in literary and cultural narratives of the period. Organised in three parts - gender, ethnicity, and language - it moves from lesser-known authors (Irena Krzywicka, Maria Kuncewicz, Debora Vogel, Zuzanna Ginczanka, Stanisława Przybyszewska, and Eleonora Kalkowska) to more canonical figures (Witold Gombrowicz, Bruno Schulz, and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz), making visible the processes through which the Polish modernist canon has been formed. Combining close reading and theoretical approaches, the course examines how questions of identity shape literary form and how Polish modernism looks different when read from its margins.