For the first time in history online technologies have made it possible to see, in real time, how people are using their digital dictionaries. Peter Sokolowski, a lexicographer at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, discusses the usage patterns of America's iconic dictionary to illustrate how politics, media and language intersect in our daily lives.

The meeting was recorded on 2 October 2018 at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. We are grateful to the US Embassy for helping to make this event happen, and to our own Dr. Justyna Włodarczyk for organizing the visit.

In this episode Prof. Paddy Lyons, Emeritus Research Associate in English Literature (University of Glasgow) and long-time friend of our Institute of English Studies (University of Warsaw) talks about metatheatricality in 18th-century English theatre, which produced effects not unlike Brecht's famous V-Effekt, a kind of theatrical alienation intended to encourage a more critical attitude in viewers.

The talk was delivered on 25 May 2018 as part of the Warsaw Literary Meetings series organized by Prof. Grażyna Bystydzieńska. Follow this link to find a complete handout containing the quotations discussed in the talk.  

Image: public domain, Kitty Clive as Lady Easy in The Careless Husband by John Faber Jr, after Philip Mercier, mezzotinto, 1739, National Portrait Gallery London.

This talk by Dr. Nicholas Johnson (Trinity College Dublin) was about the boundary-crossing nature of Samuel Beckett's oeuvre. Looking at histories of performance practices across different cultures, Dr. Johnson examined the resulting tensions in the work of Samuel Beckett, especially his work for the theatre, existing between strict or mathematically precise delineations — strips, striations, boxes, and containers — and the rhizomatic profusion of possible meanings or methodologies as actors, directors, designers, and dramaturgs read "between the lines".

Nicholas Johnson is Assistant Professor of Drama and convenor of Creative Arts Practice at Trinity College Dublin. He is also co-founder of Samuel Beckett Laboratory. A scholar-artist, director and literary translator, he uses techniques of performance in his interdisciplinary research projects.

Invited by the Embassy of Ireland and the University of Gdańsk, Nicholas Johnson will also taught a workshop exploring Beckett's work in and through performance, which was part of the Between.Pomiędzy Festival of Literature and Theatre held in Gdańsk 14-20 May 2018.

Image credit: Waiting for Godot, text by Samuel Beckett, staging by Otomar Krejca. Avignon Festival, 1978. Rufus (Estragon) and Georges Wilson (Vladimir) / photographs by Fernand Michaud. Wikimedia/Gallica.bnf.fr (item link).

This episode features Dr. Pamela Howland, concert pianist and Fullbright Visiting Scholar at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, who gave a talk entitled "A Four-Hundred-Year Musical Adventure". The talk touched on some of the main immigrant traditions in American music, with live music illustratations of the various stylistic developments.

The talk was held on 18 April 2018 in the Reading Room of the Institute of English Studies.

Visit Dr. Howland's website to learn more about the artist and to enjoy her piano music.

Image: Artist's own collection.

This episode is a keynote lecture on "Victorian Body Politics, Neo-Victorian Body Poetics: The Contested Body of the Wife in Mid-Victorian Divorce Trials" by Prof. Ann Heilmann (Cardiff University) as part of the Warsaw Literary Meetings: Rising Stars conference. 

The lecture was delivered on 20 April 2018 in the Reading Room of the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. It was hosted by Prof. Grażyna Bystydzieńska.

Please find Prof. Heilmann's slides for the lecture here.

Image: Julia Margaret Cameron, "Ellen Terry at Sixteen", Google Art Project (public domain).

In this episode Anna-Lena Oldehus (Leibniz Universität Hannover) talks about the queer dimension in contemporary African fiction (queerness being understood broadly as "a disruptive force that challenges static identity formations"), notably in Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go (2013). She gave the talk at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw on 11 April 2018. The talk was hosted by Prof. Aneta Dybska.  Image: Dili Osuhor (Teemages), "Lady in gele [duku], an African head dress" (CC BY-SA 4.0).

In this episode of "Program rozszerzony" Rūta Šlapkauskaitė (University of Vilnius) talks about Fifteen Dogs (2015): an exuberant, award-winning fantasy by the Canadian writer André Alexis. The talk was given at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw on 10 April 2018.

Follow this link to get to Rūta's page.

Image by James Joel on flickr (CC license)

This week we bring you a discussion of early American nature writing, a talk given by Prof. Marek Wilczyński (University of Gdańsk) and Prof. Mark Burrows, an academic, writer and poet, who discussed Thoreau and other poets as part of The Power of the World, a translation workshop they taught at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw on 22 March 2018.

Prof. Wilczyński's talk begins at 0'21''

Prof. Burrows's talk begins at 27'20''

The Q&A session begins at 1 h 09'30''

Photo in the cover image: David Denicolò's "Giants feet, Mariposa Grove" on flickr (under a CC license).

Wykład "O perełkach i obdartych śmieciach, czyli niemieckojęzycznych rękopisach z dawnej Biblioteki Załuskich (1747-1795) w zbiorach Biblioteki Narodowej", który 17 stycznia 2018 r. wygłosiła Anna Just (Instytut Germanistyki UW) w czytelni Biblioteki Instytutu Anglistyki UW na zaproszenie Zespołu "Badania nad Kulturą Dawną" Moniki Opalińskiej i Anny Wojtyś (IA UW).

Obraz: Zygmunt Vogel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This week on our podcast Prof. Glenda Norquay (Liverpool John Moores University) explores the dialogues in contemporary Scottish women's poetry and highlights their political engagements. Her talk, Daughterlands, was held on 17 January 2018 at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw.

Also in our show notes, some of the online content Prof. Norquay mentioned in her talk:

http://www.ljmuenglish.com/ 

http://www.ljmuenglish.com/http://www.writinglives.org/ 

http://www.ljmuenglish.com/http://www.writinglives.org/http://www.monopolygreatexpectationsedition.wordpress.com

 

Image: Phil Dolby https://www.flickr.com/photos/126654539@N08/16022841399 (CC BY 2.0)