dr Agnieszka Kotwasińska

Agnieszka Kotwasińska holds M.A. degrees from the Institute of English Studies and American Studies Center, the University of Warsaw. In 2017 she received her doctoral degree in literary studies from the University of Warsaw. In her doctoral dissertation she analyzed transformations of American families and kinship structures in contemporary horror fiction by women. Since 2012 she has been working at American Studies Center, where she offers courses in American literature, genre literature, horror cinema, and new media. She specializes in Gothic and horror studies, gender studies and queer theory, and feminist new materialism(s). Her current research interests center on literary and film canon formation, embodiment in the so-called low genres, reproduction of death in horror narratives, weird fiction(s) and schizoanalysis. Her first monograph, House of Horrors: Familial Intimacies in Contemporary American Horror Fiction was published in 2023 by the University of Wales Press.

Role at the ASC

MA Practical English coordinator

Head of the Weird Fictions Research Group

Supervisor of the ASC’s social media accounts

Member of Speculative Texts Research Group and Gender/Sexuality Research Group

Achievements

IDUB Research Grant “Śmierć ma znaczenie: nowy aparat krytyczny w badaniach nad biomedyczną śmiercią w kinie grozy”  – 2022-2023

Jury member of the Mary Kay Bray Award (Science Fiction Research Association) – 2018-2021

Monthly FemTeoria workshops coordinator – since 2017

PAAS Best American Studies Master’s Thesis winner – 2010

Publications

with Anna Kurowicka. “Readings in Queer Pleasure: Jupiter Ascending Revisited.” Science Fiction Film and Television 17 (1), 2024: 105-127.

House of Horrors Familial Intimacies in Contemporary American Horror Fiction. University of Wales Press, 2023.

with Agata Chełstowska. “Święta Drzemka: Odpoczynek jako opór?” Czas kultury 3 (2023): 19-30 .

“Into the Drowning Deep (Mira Grant, 2017) – Mimicking Femininity.” In The Deep: A Companion, edited by Marko Teodorski and Simon Bacon, 161-167. Peter Lang, 2023.

“Rosi Braidotti (1954–).” In Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk Culture, edited by Anna McFarlane, Graham J. Murphy, Lars Schmeink, 9-33. Routledge, 2022.

“Practices of Entanglement: Unreading the Genre in China Miéville’s The Scar.” Diffractive Reading New Materialism, Theory, Critique, edited by Kai Merten, 175-192. Rowman and Littliefield, 2021.

“Dis/Possessing the Polish Past in Marcin Wrona’s Demon.” Humanities 9/ 3 (2020): 59.

“Beyond Death and Mourning in A Dark Song and We Are Still Here.” Kvinder, Køn & Forskning (Women, Gender and Research), Special Issue on Queer Death Studies: Coming to Terms with Death, Dying and Mourning Differently 28/3-4: 74-85.

“Slavic Cinema.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic, edited by Clive Bloom, 725-743. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Courses (selected)

American Horror Cinema

Haunted Space in American Culture

Monsters and Machines: The Fantastic Body in American Popular Culture

Popular Genres in the US

Nostalgia in American Popular Culture

The New Indie Cinema

Beyond the House of Usher: American Gothic Today

Hobbies/non-academic interests

baking, tapestry weaving, micro-gardening