Gender/Sexuality Research Group at the American Studies Center
invites you to a meeting with its members:

Oswoić Gender: Naukowy aktywizm, innowacyjne badania i feministyczna dydaktyka
(Talking Gender: Academic Activism, Innovative Research and Feminist Pedagogy)

This event is held in Polish.

Wednesday, March 2, 2022,
5:30 p.m. CET

You can get 2 OZN points for participating in this event.
Check how to collect OZN points online here.

Where?

This event will be streamed online. To attend Zoom webinar, click the button below or enter https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84506006901 into your browser, and join the meeting.

ZOOM WEBINAR

FACEBOOK EVENT

What?

Anna Piekutowska will be talking with Dr. Karolina Krasuska, Dr. Ludmiła Janion, Aleksandra Kamińska, MA, Dr. Agnieszka Kotwasińska, Dr. Anna Kurowicka, Dr. Natalia Pamuła and Dr. Marta Usiekniewicz.

The group was formed in early 2016 in order to facilitate cooperation between doctoral and advanced MA students working, studying at, and affiliated with the American Studies Center. Under Dr. Karolina Krasuska’s tutelage, the group has organized a number of seminars devoted to different research methodologies and research practices within the field of American cultural studies. The topics covered during these seminars include disability studies, girlhood studies, hauntology, gender variance in Poland, gender and militarism, female wartime reporting, and queer desires in American speculative fiction. Since 2016 the group has invited such eminent scholars as Prof. Andrea Peto, Prof. Mary Ann Doane, Prof. Jack Halberstam, and Prof. Ann Cvetkovich to deliver lectures and lead highly popular seminars. The research group offers BA, MA and PhD courses at the ASC and beyond, and has been collectively translating Judith Butler’s Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. The Polish language podcast “Oswoić gender” [Talking Gender] disseminates the research projects conducted by the group members as well as by other ASC researchers.

Who?

Anna Piekutowska – a sociologist and a TOK FM journalist. At TOK FM she hosts “Niedzielny Poranek Radia TOK FM,” “Biuletyn Rewolucyjny” and “Szkoda czasu na złe seriale.” She has published, among others, in Krytyka Polityczna, Tygodnik Powszechny and Oko.press.

Year 2024/2025

January 23: „I’m weird. I’m a weirdo.” The Allure of Unhinged Teen Television Drama Series Riverdale (2017-2023)

January 20, 2025

Join us for the second Weird TV lecture in 2025! Teen TV programming by The CW Television Network in the last 20 years has been a wildly successful blend of soap opera, generational saga, crime, the paranormal, and erotica. This paper argues that the drama series Riverdale (2017-2023) is the last show of this kind due to its week-to-week broadcasting format, as well as its convoluted, absurd, weird, and addictive storytelling. In the span of 6 years and 7 seasons, Riverdale explored various themes and topics: serial killers, occultism, time traveling, parallel universes, superpowers, folk tales, witchcraft, and many, many more. On a purely visual level, the show does take its inspiration from the grand tradition of horror/thriller genre storytelling, BUT is it camp, pastiche, or pure kitsch? This paper attempts to situate Riverdale within a broader context of both cult cinema/TV, and teen film studies. Finally, Riverdale’s weirdness and ridiculousness would be nothing without the show’s internet discourse, fandom, and critical reception, which are part of this analysis.

Year 2024/2025

January 21: “Women Against the Law” – Screening and Discussion of Estado de Proibição!

January 20, 2025

Join us for our first 2025 event, “Women Against the Law” – Screening and discussion of Estado de Proibição!” The screening and discussion will be conducted by doctoral student Thany Sacnhes. Estado de Proibição shares the stories of women who break the law to care for their children and of those who have lost their children to state violence connected to drug prohibition. The film, created by Plataforma Brasileira de Política de Drogas in collaboration with Panamá Filmes and supported by the Open Society Foundations, was filmed in São Paulo, Recife, and Rio de Janeiro. It aims to raise public awareness of the consequences of drug prohibition, which affect both drug users and non-users. The documentary highlights the intersections between the social and therapeutic use of drugs and examines how prohibitionist policies lead to the criminalization of communities and increased police violence.

American Studies Colloquium Series

January 16: Painting in Total Darkness: Blindness as the Medium for Vision

January 16, 2025

We are delighted to invite you to the last lecture of the American Studies Colloquium Series in the 2024/2025 Fall semester! Touching on various processes, materials, histories, and methodologies of making, Stephen Proski’s lecture will show how blindness can function as a unique lens of perception, particularly as it relates to the expanded field of painting.

Year 2024/2025

January 9: It’s a True Story – It Happened to a Friend of a Friend (online)’: Urban Legends and Television in the Contemporary Era

January 9, 2025

Join us for the first Weird TV lecture in 2025! Whether centering talk programming, news television, or fictionalised accounts, urban legends nest themselves in the minds of viewers, propagating, and ultimately regressively metamorphosing & returning to oral tradition, shared from viewer to non-viewer to non-viewer, so on and so forth. The oral links which are core to the Urban Legend are recreated anew. While found near universally across televisual programming, our interest rests in the anthology format television has adopted. The stories told are familiar, but not entirely static. The narrative transaction shifts and subsumes itself to the socio-cultural changes. Each technological revolution in communication ripples and renders the narrativization of urban legends transposed onto television. It is in this vein that we will discuss the conceptualisation of the Urban Legend, the televisual forms it has taken, and its existence within the internet era.

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 19: Between The Mundane and the Heroic: Vietnamese Presence in State Socialist Poland

December 19, 2024

We are delighted to invite you to the fifth lecture of the American Studies Colloquium Series in the 2024/2025 Fall semester! This talk will examine the depictions of the (North) Vietnamese as freedom fighters within the context of the state socialist public sphere and the everyday life of Vietnamese students in Poland across generations. From idealized wartime reportages to mixed-race couples, the Vietnamese presence was marked by a multifaceted experience of adaptation, challenges, opportunities, and dynamic, interactive bonds with Polish society. This history continues to exert a profound influence on the contemporary Vietnamese diaspora and Polish-Vietnamese relationships.