Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena

Dr Agnieszka Mrozik

Fellow Agnieszka Mrozik

March - August 2017
e-mail akmrozik@gmail.com

Agnieszka Mrozik has been an assistant professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences since 2012. She holds a PhD in literary studies (2012) and an MA in American studies (2005). Since 2008 she has been teaching feminist criticism, media discourse and popular culture analysis at the Postgraduate Gender Studies Programme at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Between 2005 and 2010 she lectured in feminist criticism and twentieth-century women's literature at the Faculty of Polish Studies, at the University of Warsaw. Her doctoral dissertation examined identity politics in the feminist movement and women's literature in post-1989 Poland. She is currently working on a project titled, "Forgotten Revolution: Communist Female Intellectuals and the Making of Women's Emancipation in Post-war Poland".

Research project at the Kolleg

My project analyses the contribution of female communists to the process of women's emancipation in post-war Poland. One of my arguments is that their activity was mainly a consequence of their political beliefs. The emancipation of women was at the heart of communism as a project of building a modern society. In the overwhelmingly Catholic Polish society this commitment necessitated a thorough redefining of the traditional role of women as dutiful wives and mothers. My previous research proves that the issue of emancipation was also important to female communists for personal reasons: as women, who were treated unequally to men (including within the communist movement and the party, an issue they discussed in their memoirs) they felt compelled to act specifically against inequality of the sexes.My project has three main goals. First, I explore how, until the end of Stalinism in Poland (1956), female communists of the upper party ranks attempted to shape emancipatory discourse in the fields of culture, science and education, striving to influence the traditional thinking of Poles about gender roles. Second, I ask what happened to them and their message in the wake of the post-Stalinist "Thaw" (1955-57), which in Poland, transpired under the banner of the return to traditional concepts of the nation and gender hierarchy. And third, I analyse the collective memory regarding the place of communist leaders and their visions in post-1989 narratives of national history and the Polish women's movement.

Main areas of research

  • Women, gender and generations in communist and post-communist Eastern and Central Europe
  • Female communists in twentieth-century Poland: history, biography, and literature
  • Feminist criticism and women's literature in post-1989 Poland
  • Critical analysis of media discourse and popular culture

Positions and memberships

  • Member of the International Society for Cultural History
  • Member of the Polish Gender Studies Association
  • Member of the Editorial Board of the "Lupa Obscura" publishing series at the Institute of Literary Research Publishing House
  • Member of the Editorial Team of the cultural-political quarterly "Bez Dogmatu" [Without Dogma]

Monographs

Agnieszka Mrozik, Akuszerki transformacji. Kobiety, literatura i władza w Polsce po 1989 roku [Midwives of the transformation. Women, literature and power in Poland after 1989], Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Badań Literackich PAN, 2012.

Edited volumes

Monika Rudaś-Grodzka, Barbara Smoleń, Agnieszka Mrozik, et. al., eds, … czterdzieści i cztery. Figury literackie. Nowy kanon […forty and four. Literary figures. New canon] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Badań Literackich PAN, 2016).

Monika Rudaś-Grodzka, Katarzyna Nadana-Sokołowska, Agnieszka Mrozik, et. al., eds, Encyklopedia gender [Encyclopedia of gender], Warsaw: Czarna Owca, 2014.

Katarzyna Chmielewska, Agnieszka Mrozik, Grzegorz Wołowiec, PRL – życie po życiu [Polish People’s Republic – life after life] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Badań Literackich PAN, 2013).

Articles

Agnieszka Mrozik, Crossing Boundaries: The Case of Wanda Wasilewska and Polish Communism, Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History, no. 11 (2017): 19–53.

Agnieszka Mrozik, ‘“Dziadek (nie) był komunistą”. Między/ transgeneracyjna pamięć o komunizmie w polskich (auto)biografiach rodzinnych po 1989 roku’ [“Grandpa was (not) a communist”. Inter/ transgenerational memory about communism in Polish family (auto)biographies after 1989], Teksty Drugie, no. 1 (2016): 46–67.

Agnieszka Mrozik, Nieobecne, ale użyteczne. O pożytkach z komunistek w polskim dyskursie publicznym po 1989 roku [Absent, but useful. Making use of the communist women in Polish public discourse after 1989], in Sporne postacie polskiej krytyki feministycznej po 1989 roku [Disputed figures of Polish feminist criticism after 1989], edited by Monika Świerkosz (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Katedra, 2016), 171–208.

Agnieszka Mrozik, ‘“Traktorzystka to nie kobieta”. Polska polityka płci w okresie Odwilży’ [“A female tractor driver is not a woman”. The politics of gender during the Polish Thaw], in Przełom Października ‘56 [The breakthrough of October ‘56], edited by Paweł Dybicz (Warsaw: Oratio Recta Foundation, 2016), 133–162.

Agnieszka Mrozik, Prządki (po)rewolucyjnej rzeczywistości. Konstruowanie historii lewicy we wspomnieniach polskich komunistek w latach 60. XX wieku’ [Spinners of the (post)revolutionary reality. Constructing history of the Left in the memoirs of Polish communist women during the 1960s], in Rok 1966. PRL na zakręcie [1966. Polish People’s Republic at a turning point], edited by Katarzyna Chmielewska, Grzegorz Wołowiec, Tomasz Żukowski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Badań Literackich PAN, 2014), 255–296.

Agnieszka Mrozik, ‘“Komuniści (nie) mają ojczyzny...” Wanda Wasilewska jako polska (anty)bohaterka narodowa’ [“Communists have no homeland…” A portrait of Wanda Wasilewska], Studia Litteraria et Historica, no. 2 (2013): 528–554.

Agnieszka Mrozik, Women’s Archives as Literary Storerooms: Identity Politics in Women’s (Auto-)biographies, in Polish Literature in Transformation, edited by Ursula Phillips, Knut A. Grimstad, Kris Van Heuckelom (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2013), 139–154.

Reviews

Review of Hubert Orłowski, Robert Traba and Holger Thünemann, eds, Pokolenia albo porządkowanie historii [Generations, or the ordering of history] (Wydawnictwo Nauka i Innowacje, 2015), in Teksty Drugie 1 (2016): 253–263 (co-authored with Anna Artwińska).

Review of Piotr Lipiński, Bicia nie trzeba było ich uczyć. Proces Humera i oficerów śledczych Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa [Beating does not need to be taught. The trial of Humer and other investigating officers of the Security Office] (Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2016), in Bez Dogmatu 107 (2016): 7–10.

Review of Piotr Szumlewicz, Wielkie pranie mózgów. Rzecz o polskich mediach [Great barinwashing. A tale about Polish media] (Czarna Owca, 2015), in Zadra 1-2 (2015): 88–90.

Review of Anna Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat. A History of Violence on the Eastern Front (Cambridge University Press, 2011), in Bez Dogmatu 101-102 (2014): 101–102.

Review of Małgorzata Fidelis, Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland (Cambridge University Press, 2010), in Teksty Drugie 4 (2011): 112–119.

Full list of publications can be found here: http://ibl.waw.pl/en/abouttheinstitute/academicstaff/mrozik-agnieszka