Events

Year 2021/2022

May 23: Gender/Sexuality Conference ASC

May 23, 2022

ASC’s Gender/Sexuality Research Group invites all students and faculty members to the first ASC’s Student Conference on gender and sexuality in American studies. We have an exciting day planned, with a keynote by Dr. Richard Reitsma and four panels of student presentations, on everything from feminist theories to representation of trans characters on TV and challenging the norms of masculinity.

American Studies Colloquium Series

May 19: ‘bits of agitation on the body of the whole’: Animals in COVID-19 Literature

May 19, 2022

Given its origins in horseshoe bat populations, the SARS-CoV-2 virus offers many opportunities to re-think our relationships with the nonhuman world around us. In this talk, Raymond Malewitz will explore emerging cultural narratives embodied in COVID poetry and fiction, which tend to reinforce the stiff differences between the human and the nonhuman as physically and conceptually separate from one another.

Year 2021/2022

May 18: Oscillations: On Electronic Music and Science Fiction

May 18, 2022

What is science fiction music and what makes it science fictional in the first place? This talk will explore postwar popular music in English, basic taxonomy of the subgenre, and the role that the various technologies of musical production and reproduction have played in constructing the ‘sound of the future’ with the musical machinery of the present moment.

American Studies Colloquium Series

May 12: American Jewish Loss After the Holocaust: An Object Lesson

May 12, 2022

This talk describes how the Shoah has been commemorated in the United States, as well as asks critical questions about the future of Holocaust commemoration. It reconsiders how the Shoah is experienced and understood in relation to other American Jewish losses in terms of how different losses touch and illuminate each other.

Year 2021/2022

May 10: The American Day

May 10, 2022

A one-day program of The American Day, under the patronage of the US Embassy in Poland, encompasses presentations, lectures, film screenings and exhibitions devoted to key events in Polish-American relations in 1917–2022.

Year 2021/2022

April 23: UW Open Day 2022

April 23, 2022

Are you considering applying for a degree in American Studies? Visit our stand during UW Open Day to meet our students and faculty, and learn more about our programs!

News

ASC classes open to students from Ukraine

March 29, 2022

All students from Ukraine are welcome to attend our classes as auditors—that is to say, as unenrolled students.

News

ASC for Ukraine

March 22, 2022

The ASC for Ukraine student initiative aims to provide immediate help to Ukrainian refugees in the Mokotów district. Check how to get involved.

News

Fulbright grants – call for applications

March 10, 2022

Applications for Fulbright grants aimed at Polish students, scholars and/or educators, who wish to study or conduct research and teaching projects in the U.S., are now open.

American Studies Colloquium Series

April 7: The Look of the Past: Anachronism and Critique in Contemporary Comics

April 7, 2022

This talk will address the visual styles of contemporary cartoonists, who often mimic the early twentieth-century popular culture, producing work that appears much older than it actually is. Levay explores the work of American cartoonist Al Columbia – a vital figure in experimental comics’ fascination with anachronism.

Year 2021/2022

March 30: Queer Ecosystems: Gothic Materialism in Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House

March 30, 2022

This talk addresses the anxieties related to moving through a heteropatriarchal world as a marginalized person and looks into the trauma of queer intimate partner abuse through the trope of the haunted house in Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir. Carolin Jesussek seeks to show how the gothic can address long-distance relationships, the silence around queer intimate partner abuse, and gendered understandings of violence.

Year 2021/2022

March 27: ASC Oscar Night 2022

March 27, 2022

The iconic ASC event is back! The ASC students union has the pleasure to invite to the ASC Oscar Night 2022, during which we will meet for an all-night watch party of movies and, most importantly, this year’s Oscar gala.

Year 2021/2022

March 24: An Introduction to Concepts of the Archive and Methods of Archival Research

March 24, 2022

This workshop is addressed to BA Students of American Studies. It has two parts, one on conceptualizing archives, one on methods of archival research. It raises the question of how archives structure what can be said and thought, how archives can be oppressive to marginalized subjects and how they can also unfold liberatory potential.

Year 2021/2022

March 23: Distributed Humanitarianism: Digital Disruption, Grassroots Labor, and Volunteer Affect in Poland’s Refugee Response

March 23, 2022

The initial response to the war in Ukraine was carried out by loose networks of self-organizing volunteers. In this talk, we will offer some preliminary thoughts about how the Polish response poses a challenge to the international humanitarian system. What are the advantages of distributed humanitarianism, and what are its pitfalls?

American Studies Colloquium Series

March 17: Black on the Range: Recentering the History and Culture of Black Americans in the Old West

March 17, 2022

This talk will address the past history and contributions of Black Americans to the creation and establishment of the Old West by (re)centering Black Americans within the heart of the American West and highlighting their creativity in maintaining a rich representation of Black western life and legacy.