Marek Paryż Ph.D.

Marek Paryż holds his M.A. from Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin and his Ph.D. from Warsaw University, where he is currently an assistant professor in the Section of American Literature in the English Department. He has been a recipient of research grants from the Eccles Center for American Studies, British Library, London, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy Institute for American Studies, Free University, Berlin. He has published Social and Cultural Aspects of Madness in American Literature 1798-1860 (2001) and co-edited (with Agata Preis-Smith) The Poetics of America: Explorations in the Literature and Culture of the US (2004). He is a board member and treasurer of the Polish Association for American Studies. He cooperates on a regular basis with the Polish literary monthly New Books to which he contributes reviews of contemporary American and postcolonial prose.

Duty hours in the winter semester 2008/2009:

• Tuesday, 12.30 - 14.00

Academic interests:

• American literature in the nineteenth century
• literature and medicine
• postcolonial literature and criticism
• the western

Selected publications:

Monograph:

• Social and Cultural Aspects of Madness in American Literature 1798-1860 Warsaw: Bellona, 2001

Book edited:

• (z Agatą Preis-Smith) The Poetics of America: Explorations in the Literature and Culture of the United States Warsaw: Institute of English Studies UW, 2004

Articles:

• "Passage to (more than) India: The Poetics and Politics of Walt Whitman's Textualization of the Orient." The Poetics of America: Explorations in the Literature and Culture of the United States. Ed. Agata Preis-Smith and Marek Paryż. Warsaw: English Department, University of Warsaw, 2004: 25-44
• "Narrative Functions of Medical Discourse in Edgar Allan Poe's 'Berenice'." Polish Journal for American Studies vol. 1 (2004): 87-98
• "Depictions of the Vanishing Frontier Outlaw: Sam Peckinpah, Michael Ondaatje, and Billy the Kid." Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny 4 (2004): 361-370
• "V.S. Naipaul's Travels in the American South." Traveling Subjects: American Journeys in Space and Time Ed. Dominika Ferens, Justyna Kociatkiewicz and Elżbieta Klimek-Dominiak. Kraków: Rabid, 2004: 141-149
• "Ironic Parallels in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace." The Legacy of History. English and American Studies and the Significance of the Past. Vol. I: Literature Ed. Teresa Bela and Zygmunt Mazur. Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press, 2003: 374-385
• "Some Comments on the Presentation of the Woman in Clint Eastwood's Film Unforgiven." American Portraits and Self-Portraits. Ed. Jerzy Durczak. Lublin: Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Press, 2002: 277-286
• "Some Remarks on the Black Presence in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven." Local Colors of the Stars and Stripes. Ed. Marta Wiszniowska. Toruń: Nicolas Copernicus University Press, 2001: 247-257.
• "Authorial/Narratorial Voice, Narrativity and the Intricacies of Representation in Dorothea Dix's Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts 1843." American Studies (Warsaw), vol. 19 (2001): 69-7
• "Herman Melville's Pierre: The Frontiers of Insanity." ZAA: Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik. A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture 2 (2001): 159-169
• "The Ridiculed Reason: The Presentation of the Insane Asylum in N. Hawthorne's 'Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent' and E.A. Poe's 'The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether'." American Studies (Warsaw), vol. 18 (1999): 87-104

List of courses:

128	American Short Story
	The course concentrates on the historical development of the American short story. Among the issues discussed during the course, there are: early short-story forms (W. Irving, N. Hawthorne, E.A. Poe), short story and regional writing (M.W. Freeman, S.O. Jewett, W. Faulkner, F. O'Connor, T. Capote), short-story cycles (S. Anderson, E. Welty), ethnic short stories (R. Wright, R. Ellison, B. Malamud, A. Tan), postmodern short stories (T. Pynchon, R. Coover, W. Abish, L. Anderson), science-fiction short stories (R. Bradbury, P.K. Dick, W. Gibson).
220	American Renaissance
	The course focuses on the major figures of the American Renaissance: R.W. Emerson, H.D. Thoreau, N. Hawthorne, H. Melville, W. Whitman and others. The course introduces their most famous works, like Thoreau's Walden or Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables as well as their less known texts, for example Emerson's English Traits. The aim of the course is to emphasize the diversity of the texts representing the American Renaissance and to present this literary phenomenon in a broad historical context. Attention is also paid to contemporary debates over the American Renaissance.
238	The American Gothic: Origins and Developments
	The course highlights the expansive character of the Gothic mode in American literature and film. The Gothic has been traditionally associated with a set of conventions, such as spatial organization and the configuration of characters. The course analyzes the modifications of the convention across two centuries, starting with the end of the 18th century. Special attention is paid to the ideological entanglements of the Gothic mode. Among the authors of interest, there are: Ch. B. Brown, E.A. Poe, H. Melville, Ch. P. Gilman, H. James, E. Wharton, W. Faulkner, T. Capote, J.C. Oates.
133	American Innovative Fiction After World War Two
	The course concerns itself with the most important, or otherwise noteworthy, innovative tendencies in post-war American prose. The topics to be discussed include: postmodern fiction (K. Vonnegut, D. Barthelme, W. Gaddis, K. Acker), critical observations made by postmodern writers (J. Barth, R. Federman), New Journalism - theory and practice (T. Capote, T. Wolfe, N. Mailer), innovative autobiographical narratives (J. Kosinski), magic realism (T. Morrison).
1302	The Study of an American Fiction Writer: Edgar Allan Poe
	The course is geared at a recapitulation and reassessment of the literary achievement of Edgar Allan Poe. The issues of interest are: Poe's literary criticism, poetry, horror fiction, detective stories, satires, questions of class, race and gender, Poe and nineteenth-century science, the writer and his work in the context of the epoch.
1208	Contemporary Jewish Writing in America
	The course introduces major 20th-century American fiction writers of Jewish origin: P. Roth, B. Malamud, S. Bellow, I. B. Singer, L. Begley, G. Paley, C. Ozick. During the course, attention will be paid to the stylistic and thematic aspects of the works of individual authors as well as to their attempts to present generalizing views of the Jewish experience in America.