We are pleased to announce an online lecture by
Łukasz Muniowski
(University of Warsaw)

Narratives, Basketball, Authorship: NBA Storytelling on and off the Court

This lecture is going to be the a part
of the 2020/2021 Spring Edition of the
American Studies Colloquium Series.

Thursday, May 13, 2021
at 4:45 p.m.

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

poster by Paulina Derecka (@paulinaderecka)

Where?

This lecture will be streamed online. To attend, click the button below or enter https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88240667468 into your browser, and join the meeting.

ZOOM MEETING

FACEBOOK EVENT

What?

This presentation is devoted to narratives created around the National Basketball Association, the best basketball league in the world. I will incorporate the material from the three books on the NBA that I have written so far in order to construct a comprehensive picture of today’s NBA from a cultural studies perspective. In the first part, I am going to present several players: their private and public personas as well as their depictions in the media. The athletes have been picked not only on the basis of the success that they enjoyed on the basketball court but primarily because of the significance of their career narratives. All represent certain archetypes, prevalent not only in the world of professional basketball but in wider contemporary culture. These tropes can be mostly found in biographies and autobiographies of leading sports stars, although, as I intend to prove, they are not necessary to form a captivating story.  The analysis of the athletes’ life writing will be complemented with an examination of other cultural narratives in the world of basketball. In the second part of the talk, I will highlight the importance of the three-point shot and the bench in achieving success in the modern-day NBA. Finally, I will try to explain why all of this can be actually interesting for an academic who is not interested in sports.

Who?

Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Warsaw. Assistant Professor at Wszechnica Polska Szkoła Wyższa w Warszawie, lecturer at Społeczna Akademia Nauk, and English teacher at Prywatne Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Zuzanny Ginczanki. Author of Three-Pointer! A 40-Year NBA History (McFarland, 2020), Narrating the NBA: Representations of Leading Players after the Michael Jordan Era (Lexington, 2021), and The Sixth Man: A History of the NBA Off the Bench (McFarland, 2021). Co-editor (with Aldona Kobus) of Sex, Death and Resurrection in Altered Carbon: Essays on the Netflix Series (McFarland, 2020). In the near future, he will edit three collections of essays – on the Uncharted video game series (McFarland, with Kamil Chrzczonowicz), on boredom (European Journal of American Studies, with Anna Pochmara), and on the works of Truman Capote (Warsaw University Press). He is also working on two book projects: one on James Harden and the Houston Rockets (with Albert Ambroziewicz) and another on the 35-year history of the New Jersey Nets basketball team and its relationship with the state of New Jersey.

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.

Year 2024/2025

December 18: The Trump Transition – What is New and What is Not

December 18, 2024

Leadership Research Groupis inviting all those who would like to put the Trump transition to a presidential scholarship context and better understand the Trump transition decisions, the prospects for the future in domestic and foreign policy areas they bring, and the impact that Trump leadership may have on the political scene in Washington to a talk followed by a Q&A session by Professor Stephen Farnsworth.

Year 2024/2025

December 17: We Want Change NOW! The Feminist Manifesto in Theory and Practice

December 17, 2024

During the workshop “We Want Change NOW! The Feminist Manifesto in Theory and Practice”, Aleksandra Julia Malinowska, a doctoral candidate at the University of Warsaw,will delve into the history of feminist manifestos and their pivotal role in the women’s movement in the United States. We’ll explore how activists of the second wave of feminism used grassroots publications to raise awareness, voice the demands of emerging women’s groups, and build communication networks between organizations spread across the country. Together, we’ll analyze the literary techniques that make the manifesto genre a powerful tool for inspiring activist mobilization beyond the pages of the text.

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 12: Technological Imaginaries and the Universal Ambitions of Silicon Valley

December 12, 2024

Drawing on her new book, Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist imaginaries and the politics of digital technologies (University of California Press), in this talk Ferrari shows how these discourses, which she calls “technological imaginaries”, shape how we experience digital technologies. She discusses how, for the past 30 years, Silicon Valley tech actors have produced and popularized a specific way of thinking about digital technologies, which has become mainstream. This dominant technological imaginary brings together technocratic aspirations and populist justifications. While arising out of the peculiarities of Silicon Valley and of the American 1990s, this dominant imaginary has posited its universality by presenting its tenets as if they were global, unbiased, and equally suitable for everyone, everywhere. She argues that to really curb the socio-political influence of Big Tech companies we also need to understand, critique, and resist the power of their technological imaginary.

News

ASC Library has received funding from the Social Responsibility of Science

December 12, 2024

ASC Library has received funding from the Social Responsibility of Science (SON) program — “Support for Scientific Libraries,” implemented by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.