prof. UAM dr hab.Wiesław Kuhn

Wiesław Kuhn
University professor

Websites / Profiles

Degrees

  • M.A. in English, Oxford University, 1984
  • Ph.D. in American literature, University of East Anglia, 1986
  • D.Litt. in American literature, Poznań, 2011

Research interests

  • Literature of the South
  • The Agrarian tradition in Southern Writing: Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom and Katherine Anne Porter
  • Henry James
  • Modernism
  • American Naturalism, especially Stephen Crane and Henry Adams
  • Religion and literature, particularly in relation to the theoretical work of Blanchot and Levinas
  • Political theology and literary theory
  • Edgar Allan Poe and the American Gothic

Teaching experience

  • Southern literature
  • American writers of the 1920s
  • American modernism
  • History of American literature
  • Critical theory

Professional organizations

  • International Association of University Professors of English
  • Society for the Study of Southern Literature
  • Modern Language Association
  • Polskie Stowarzyszenie Studiów Amerykanistycznych (Polish Association for American Studies)
  • The Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion
  • Christian Literary Studies Group
  • The Katherine Anne Porter Society
  • Société d'études modernistes

Awards

  • Adam Mickiewicz University Rector’s Prize for Scholarly Research, 2011
  • Medal of the Commission of National Education (KEN), 2015

Research Fellowship

  • Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship, University of Texas at Austin, 2016-2017. Title of project: “The Politics of Bare Life: The European Imagination of James Agee”. Supported by the Fred W. Todd Southern Literature Endowment Fund.

Scholarships

  • Visiting Scholarship, John F. Kennedy Centre for American Studies, Free University, Berlin, October-November 2002
  • Visiting Scholarship, John F. Kennedy Centre for American Studies, Free University, Berlin, November-December 2008

Guest Lectures

  • “‘I Can’t Live in Their World Any Longer’: Modernity and the Literature of the American South”, University of Vienna, April 2016

Guest Seminar

  • Katherine Anne Porter seminar in “The American South and Europe: Mutual Perceptions” (seminar series organized by Prof dr Waldemar Zacharasiewicz), English Department, University of Vienna, April 2016.

Papers read at international conferences and congresses

  • 4th Annual PAAS Conference, Puławy, 1994
  • 6th Annual Fulbright Conference, Toruń, 1995
  • EAAS Biannual Conference, Warsaw, 1996
  • Literary Theory Conference, Sevastopol, 1996
  • Annual Literary Conference, St. Petersburg, 1997
  • 3rd International Gothic Association Conference, London, 1997
  • EAAS Southern Studies Forum Symposium, Aero, Denmark, 1997
  • Organs, Organisms, Organisations Conference Ustron, 1999
  • Polish Association of American Studies Annual Conference, Toruń, 2000
  • "Nature's Nation Revisited": European Association of American Studies Conference, Graz, 2000
  • Polish Association for American Studies Annual Conference, Poznan, 2003
  • PAAS (Polish Association for American Studies) Annual Conference, “American Experience—The Experience of America”, Gdansk, Poland, October 2011
  • PAAS (Polish Association for American Studies) Annual Conference, “Americascapes”, Puławy, Poland, October 2012
  • “Henry James: His Great Wars and Battles”. International Conference, Nicolas Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland, May 2013
  • PAAS (Polish Association for American Studies) Annual Conference, "Eating America", Wrocław, Poland, October 2013
  • Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Biannual Conference, Arlington, Virginia, March 2014
  • “Religion and Spirituality in Literature and the Arts”, Department of English, University of Bucharest, Romania, June 2015
  • Polish Association of American Studies annual conference, “Homeliness, Domesticity and Security in American Culture”, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, September 2015
  • Katherine Anne Porter panel, American Literature Association annual conference, San Francisco, May 2016
  • "Ideas Crossing the Atlantic: Theories, Normative Conceptions and Cultural Images": international conference held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Dec 2-4 2016
  • "Border Crossings: Translation, Migration and Gender in the Americas, the Transatlantic and the Transpacific", Society for the Study of American Women Writers, University of Bordeaux, Montaigne, France, July 2017
  • Société d'études modernistes, “Modernist Objects”, Sorbonne University, Paris, 13-16 June 2018 [paper and chairing panel on 'Magical Materialism']
  • International Association of University Professors of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, 22-26 July 2019 [paper and chairing session on Early American Literature (with Laura Stevens)]
  • Christian Literary Studies Group Conference, “‘Every man a liar”: truth, text, rhetoric”, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, 2 November 2019