If you want to be a social media star or simply wish you knew how to write that film response for class, these are workshops for you!

FILM CRITICISM METHODOLOGY
Thursday, Jan 16
2:15 pm-6:15 pm, room 117

TV CRIITICISM METHODOLOGY
Friday, January 17
1:00 pm – 5:00 pm, room 108

Both workshops led by
the one-of-a-kind Kaja Klimek.

Registration required!

Where?

Workshops take place at the American Studies Center, al. Niepodległości 22, Warsaw.

What?

Each 4-hour session is dedicated to methodologies and approaches to film and tv criticism, including mainstream and niche popular culture. Kaja Klimek, who is an educator, translator, and film and culture critic, will present key trends and perspectives in current film and tv criticism in various media, including traditional and new media. These workshops offer MA students a critical toolbox for film and tv analysis necessary for quality film and tv analyses.

If you are interested in film and tv criticism, these workshops are not to be missed!

Each workshop is 8 OZNs!

Sign up for each workshop by Jan 14 at warsztaty.osa@gmail.com

Who?

Kaja Klimek is an educator, translator, film and media critic. Graduate of journalism and cultural studies at the Jagiellonian University, she is pursuing a PhD on DJ culture in Poland. She has been teaching classes on film and popular culture at the University of Warsaw and University of Gdańsk, as well as at the Warsaw Documentary Film Academy run by the Millenium Docs Against Gravity film festival.

She is also a festival programer and curator working with the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute, and Nowy Teatr where she hosts the Series Discussion Club. In 2014-2016 she hosted the Weekend Film Magazine on TVP, and now is one of the hosts of TVN Fabuła’s Seriaale, the first program on a Polish network devoted entirely to TV series. She also runs her own YouTube channel dedicated to pop culture and film. She also works with Filmweb and Polish Radio Four. As a Q&A host, she has been working with a number of Polish and international film festivals, including American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Off Camera in Krakow, Warsaw Film Festival and Docs Against Gravity in Warsaw, as well as Short Film Festival in Uppsala. She is interested in graphic novels, popular culture, representation of women on screen and the phenomenon that is Nicolas Cage.

Year 2024/2025

10 Grudnia: Odmieńczość: Obywatelstwo Seksualne i Archiwum – Premiera Książki

November 25, 2024

Zapraszamy na dyskusję z udziałem prof. Tomasza Basiuka, prof. Agnieszki Kościańskiej i dra Jędrzeja Burszty, redaktorów książki “Odmieńczość: obywatelstwo seksualne i archiwum”, która ukaże się nakładem Wydawnictw Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Rozmowę poprowadzi dr Ludmiła Janion.

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 5: Reinventing the Past to Change the Future: Alt-History and Reactionary Futurity

November 25, 2024

This presentation examines “alt-history” as a mode of reactionary worldbuilding, with a focus on how far-right influencers use alternate histories to reshape public understandings of the past and galvanize political action. Through examples like Tucker Carlson’s Patriot Purge and Dinesh D’Souza’s Death of a Nation, the talk explores how reactionary narratives blend science fictional techniques with conspiracy fantasies to legitimize authoritarian politics. The discussion includes a genealogy of the right-wing myth of “liberal fascism,” tracing its evolution and role in contemporary ideological landscapes shaped by historical revisionism and speculative worldbuilding.

American Studies Colloquium Series

November 28: Soviet-Born Jewish Literature between North America and Germany

November 22, 2024

In this conversation, Stuart Taberner (University of Leeds) and Karolina Krasuska (University of Warsaw) will explore some of the parallels and contrasts between the experiences of Soviet Jews who migrated to Germany and the United States in successive waves since the 1960s. Specifically, they will examine the literary production of these cohorts of Soviet Jewish migrants, relating to arrival in the destination country, the reconfiguration of Jewish identity, gender, and Holocaust memory. Following a brief introduction to the historical, sociological, and literary context in Germany and the USA, Stuart and Karolina will engage in a discussion of key points of comparisons and difference.

Year 2024/2025

November 21: “House of Horrors: Familial Intimacies in Contemporary American Horror Fiction” Author’s Meeting

November 19, 2024

Join us on November 21, 2024 for an author’s meeting with Dr. Agnieszka Kotwasińska about her book “House of Horrors: Familial Intimacies in Contemporary American Horror Fiction” published last year by the University of Wales Press. Dr. Kotwasińska will be joined by Dr. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, and the event will be moderated by Dr. Jędrzej Burszta.

Year 2024/2025

November 20: ‘A Plane out of Phase’ – The Dark Continuance of the Gothic 1980s

November 19, 2024

Weird Fictions Research Group invites you to join for a fantastic (no pun intended) lecture by our guest, Dr. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn from Manchester Metropolitan University! This lecture asks you to consider the dark return of the Gothic 1980s in contemporary culture. Drawing upon ideas and examples of sequelisation, IP branding, apparatus theory, YouTube video curation, nostalgic programming, weird TV, and music, and the confluence of such forms in streaming series including Stranger Things and the current media adoption of Dark MAGA, this lecture invites you to examine the toxicity of the rhetoric of restorative projections and to query its undervalued reflective nostalgia as imagined onscreen to reclaim the future from the precarious dark present.