Marta Figlerowicz
Marta Figlerowicz is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Yale. She is the author of Flat Protagonists and Spaces of Feeling.
Imagining Ukraine
Poland and Russia both think of Ukraine as a seat of authentic Slavic culture. Józef Czapski’s war memoir highlights how this has often clashed with Ukraine’s independence.
English as a Sexual Language
Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness movingly depicts the vulnerabilities of queer desire, but it also continues a long tradition of exoticizing Eastern European sexuality.
The Myths of Enlightenment
For the philosopher and intellectual historian Hans Blumenberg, myths and metaphors were pivotal to philosophical thinking, not opposed to it.
Poland’s Forgotten Bohemian War Hero
From the bisexual demimonde of prewar Paris to investigating Soviet war crimes, Józef Czapski’s life encapsulates the extremes of twentieth-century Europe.
Rewriting Poland
Novelist Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the Booker International Prize, presents a multicultural Poland, to the ire of the Polish far-right.
The Erotics of Mentorship
The best teaching is always intimate. Today’s universities make it difficult to talk about that.
The Disillusionment of Post-Soviet Europe
To understand why Europe seems more balkanized now than ever, we must look to Eastern Europe’s failed reconstruction.
