dr Irena Księżopolska
Deparment of British Literature
assistant professor
First year counsellor (BA studies)
Room number: 2.245
email: i.ksiezopolska2@uw.edu.pl
Fridays 13.00-14.30
room 2.245
It is best to email me ahead of time to get an appointment.
Degrees
- BA - Teachers' College, University of Warsaw, 2001
- MA - Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, 2004
- PhD - Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, 2011
Research interests and projects
- modernism, postmodernism (metafiction and metacinema)
- comparative literature, film adaptation
- Vladimir Nabokov
- contemporary prose (McEwan, Barnes, Banville, Ishiguro)
- detective ficiton, sensational novel
Selected publications
Monographs
Ian McEwan: Subversive Readings, Informed Misreadings, New York: Routledge, 2024. 10.4324/9781032649474
Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory, ed. I. Księżopolska and M. Wiśniewski, Warsaw: Count August Cieszkowski Foundation, 2019 (collected essays). https://kronos.org.pl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Vladimir-Nabokov-and-the-Fictions-of-Memory.pdf
The Web of Sense: Patterns of Involution in Selected Fictions by Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov. New Americanists in Poland, ed. T. Basiuk, vol. 3. Bern, New York, Wien: Peter Lang, 2012.
Book chapters
“Biographer as Impostor: Banville and Nabokov” in: Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory, ed. I. Księżopolska and M. Wiśniewski, Warsaw: Count August Cieszkowski Foundation, 2019, 226-252. https://kronos.org.pl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Vladimir-Nabokov-and-the-Fictions-of-Memory.pdf
“Narration as a Resurrection of the Dead: the Role of Storytelling in Banville’s Ghosts” in:Alex Wilkinson & Carlo Comanducci, eds. The Matter of Telling (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 38–46. https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004387683/BP000005.xml
“To Endure Love: Mental Illness and the Unreliability Syndrome” in: Novelistic Inquiries into the Mind, ed. Grzegorz Maziarczyk, Joanna Teske (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2016), 77-94.
“Diagnosing Hermann: The Perfect Balance of Insanity and Cunning in Nabokov’s Despair,” in: Les narrateurs Fous / Mad Narrators. Edited by N. Jaeck, C. Mallier, A. Schmitt, R. Girard. Pessac: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme d'Aquitaine, 2014, pp. 37-51.
“The Pattern Camouflaged: Symbolism as a Trap for the Reader in Vladimir Nabokov’s Mary,” in: Camouflage, Secrecy and Exposure in Literary and Cultural Studies. Ed.Wojciech Kalaga, Marcin Mazurek, Marcin Sarnek. Katowice: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 2014, pp. 58-69.
“The Alien Face in the Mirror: Delusions, Hallucinations and Wish-fulfillment in Jane Eyre,” in: Face to Face, Page to Page: PASE Papers in Literature, Language and Culture. Edited by Dorota Babilas, Agnieszka Piskorska, Paweł Rutkowski. Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2014, pp. 309-318.
“McEwan’s Solar as a Comedy of Human Condition: On Hypocrisy, Global Warming and Plagiarism,” in: Old Challenges and New Horizons in English and American Studies. Edited by Anna Walczuk and Władysław Witalisz, Bern, New York, Wien: Peter Lang, 2014, pp. 279-291.
“Recycling the Self: Cultural Amnesia in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.” A Culture of Recycling/ Recycling Culture? Repetitiveness, Recurrence, Cyclicity, ed. Wojciech Kalaga, Marzena Kubisz, Jacek Mydla. Bern, New York, Wien: Peter Lang, 2011, pp. 101-112.
“The Sinister Space of Vladimir Nabokov’s Fictional World.” Exploring Space: Spatial Notions in Cultural, Literary and Language Studies, vol. 1: Space in Cultural and Literary Studies, ed. Andrzej Ciuk, Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, pp. 141-148.
“The Missing Body: Muriel Spark’s Robinson as a mock-detective story.” The Body. Readings in English and American Literature and Culture 2, ed. Ilona Dobosiewicz, Jacek Gutorow. Opole, 2009, Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Opolskiego, pp. 139-152.
Journal articles
"Shakespeare and Other Suspects: The Concealed Narrator in Ian McEwan’s Nutshell" - Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 64, no. 3 (2023): 365-378. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2021.2025030
“Can Androids Write Science Fiction? Ian McEwan’s Machines like Me” - Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 63 no. 4 (2022): 414-429. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00111619.2020.1851165
“Nabokov and Banville: Hidden Stories in Despair and The Book of Evidence” - Partial Answers 18.1 (2020), pp. 101-124. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/745024
“Self-translation as a Ghost Story: Vladimir Nabokov’s The Eye,”Przekładaniec, English Issue 2019 - Translation and Memory, pp. 228-254. https://www.ejournals.eu/Przekladaniec/English-issues/Special-Issue-Translation-and-memory/art/15652/
„Autoprzekład jako widmowa opowieść: Oko Vladimira Nabokova,” Przekładaniec, 39 - Przekład i pamięć 2, grudzień 2019. https://www.ejournals.eu/Przekladaniec/2019/Numer-39/art/15527/
“Reader’s Meanders: Virginia Woolf’s Essays” - Zeszyty Naukowe Uczelni Vistula 65.2 (2019): 16-35. http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.ekon-element-000171562301
“Kubrick’s Lolita: Quilty as the Author” – Literature/Film Quarterly 46.2 (2018), http://www.salisbury.edu/lfq/_issues/46_2/kubricks_lolita_quilty_as_author.html
“Spectral Reality: Muriel Spark’s The Hothouse by the East River” –Zeszyty Naukowe Uczelni Vistula 58.1 (2018): 18-30. http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-acb8d305-e56a-4f91-afe5-15db5f59c6ea
“The Silent Malice of Inanimate Objects: Nabokov’s Interiors,” Kronos Philosophical Journal 5 (2016): 64-77.
“Jane Eyre w kleszczach lęku: guwernantki i upiory,” Kronos 37 (2016): 234-253.
“Metafictional Agatha Christie: Self-Parody as the Perfect Crime,” Clues: Journal of Detection 34. 1 (2016): 31-40.
“The Garden of Circular Paths: Nabokov’s Symbols of Continuity,” Kronos Philosophical Journal 4 (2015): 240-249.
“Nabokov's Aerial Viaduct: Pale Fire and the Return to the Forbidden Past,” Anglica 24.1 (2015): 41-57. http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-733b1e52-31db-43ec-88e0-de86f104ed6c
“Turning tables: enchantment, entrapment and empowerment in McEwan’s Sweet Tooth,” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction vol. 56:4/2015: 415-434. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00111619.2014.959643
“The Mirror’s Underside: Vladimir Nabokov’s Autobiographic Fictions,” Kronos Philosophical Journal, 3 (2014): 153-171.
“Visible Worlds and the Art of Narration: Vladimir Nabokov's and Italo Calvino’s Cultivation of Unreliability through Visualization,” Kronos: Philosophical Journal, vol. 2/2013, pp. 136-157.
“Loitering with Intent: Daemonic Author and Self-inventing Heroes.” Kronos Philosophical Journal, 1 (2012): 79-91.
“The Secret Life of Minor Characters in Mrs. Dalloway”. Virginia Woolf Bulletin, 28 (May 2008): 36-47.
“The Fabulous Creatures: Metaphors of Monsters in Woolf’s fiction.” Virginia Woolf Bulletin, 23 (September 2006): 34-44.
“Temporal Loops in Virginia Woolf’s Texts.” Anglica, 15 (2006): 51-57.
“Props and Personages: The Significance of the Secondary Characters in Mrs. Dalloway.” Virginia Woolf Miscellany, 66 (Winter 2004): 19-20.
Older publications can be found on the complete list in PBN
Conferences
Conferences
“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Dead, the Survivors and the False Body,“ From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria 8: Body / Mind / Spirituality, University of Warsaw, 20-22 Sept 2023.
“Memory Rewritten by the Present, Memory Rewriting the Future: Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time”, Ars Culturae Memoriae, University of Warsaw, Warsaw 12-13 January 2022
“Turning the Story Inside-Out: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as Detective Fiction,” Captivating Criminality 5: Insiders and Outsiders, Bath Spa University, Corsham, June-July 2018.
“Ghostly Identities: Layered Self-formation in Vladimir Nabokov’s The Eye,” PASE 2018, Łódź University, June 2018.
“ЛолитаКубрика: Куильти в роли автора,” Nabokov Readings, St. Petersburg, July 2017.
“McEwan’s Nutshell: Another Twist on Unreliability,” PASE 2017: Epistemological Canons in Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Gdańsk, June 2017.
“Banville and Nabokov: Biographer as an Imposter,” Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory, University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS), September 2016.
“Banville and Nabokov: ‘A Quality of the Numinous’ in The Book of Evidence” Nabokov Readings, St. Petersburg, July 2016.
“Ад собственной души: Соглядатай Владимира Набокова как попытка формирования потусторонности.“ Philosophy and Humanities in the Present Age, Białystok University, October 2015.
“To Endure Love: Mental Illness and the Unreliability Syndrome.” Vulnerability, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme d'Aquitaine, Bordeaux Montaigne University, October 2015.
“The Silent Malice of Inanimate Objects: Nabokov’s Interiors.” PAAS 2015: Homeliness, Domesticity and Security in American Culture, SWPS, September 2015.
“Patterns of Nostalgia: Decoding Nabokov’s Symbols in Pale Fire.” Memory, Melancholy and Nostalgia: 4th International Interdisciplinary Memory Conference, Uniwersytet Gdański, September 2015.
“Narration as a Resurrection of the Dead: The Role of Storytelling in Banville’s Ghosts.”Storytelling Project: Story’s Place in Our Lives, Interdisciplinary Group, Mansfield College, Oxford, September 2015.
“The Specter in the Bowler Hat: The Eye as a Ghost Story.” Nabokov Readings, St. Petersburg University and Nabokov Museum, July 2015.
“Remembering as Rewriting: Deception and Artistic Power in Atonement.” Memory Frictions, University of Zaragoza, May 2015.
“Mastering the Reader’s Emotions: Narrative Instabilities in Atonement.” PASE 2015 - Emotions, Wrocław University, April 2015.
“Ghostly Identities: Proleptic Memory as an Element of Self-formation in The Eye.”Images of Identity, University of Zurich, January 2015.
“В саду кольцевых тропинок: набоковская символика бесконечности / The Garden of the Circular Paths: Nabokov’s symbols of continuity.” Scientific, Social and Literary Aspects of Philosophy, Białystok University, October 2014.
“Nabokov's Aerial Viaduct: Pale Fire and the Return to the Forbidden Past.” Ties and Knots. Bridges between Lands and Cultures, University of Silesia, September 2014.
“The Mirror’s Underside: Vladimir Nabokov’s Autobiographical Fictions.” Memory: Forgetting and Creating, University of Gdańsk, September 2014.
“Turning Tables: Enchantment, Entrapment and Empowerment in McEwan’s Sweet Tooth.” PASE 2014 Visions and Revisions, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, April 2014.
“The Alien Face in the Mirror: Delusions, Hallucinations and Wish-fulfillment in Jane Eyre.” PASE 2013 Face to Face, Page to Page, University of Warsaw, April 2013.
“Diagnosing Hermann: The Perfect Balance of Insanity and Cunning in Nabokov’s Despair.” Les narrateurs fous /Mad narrators, University of Bordeaux (France), 18-20 October 2012.
“McEwan’s Solar as a Comedy of Human Condition: On Global Warming, Hypocrisy and Plagiarism.” PASE 2012 Old Challenges, New Horizons, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, April 2012.
“The Sinister Space of Vladimir Nabokov’s Fictional World.” PASE 2009 Space, Opole University, Kamień Śląski, April 2009.
“The Pattern Camouflaged: Symbolism as a Trap for the Reader in Vladimir Nabokov’s Mary.” Camouflage. Voyeurism. Exhibition. Discourses and practices of deception, surveillance, and transparency, University of Silesia, Ustroń, September 2007.
“Recycling the Self: Cultural Amnesia in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.” Caught in the treadmill? Recycling culture / the culture of Recycling, University of Silesia, Ustroń, September 2006.
Other
Guest Lectures
19/02/2019 – “Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory” at American Institute of Philosophical and Cultural Thought, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
10/04/2019 – “Vladimir Nabokov between Russia and America” at the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, University of Texas at Austin.