Dr. Dieter De Bruyn

Curriculum

  • MA in East European Languages and Cultures (UGent, 1999)
  • PhD in East European Languages and Cultures (UGent, 2006)

Teaching

  • Central European literature and culture (BA3 and minor)
  • Aspects of Central European (Cultural) History (MA)
  • Language and textual analysis: Polish (MA; partim textual analysis)

Current research

  • PhD project: Reflexivity in Polish Modernism. Karol Irzykowski and Bruno Schulz between autotematyzm and metafiction (defended in 2006)
  • Postdoctoral project: Memory Cultures and Cultural Memory in Contemporary Poland (Museums, Comics, Internet)

Research interests

  • 20th-century Polish narrative prose (Modernism (K. Irzykowski, B. Schulz, W. Gombrowicz, Witkacy); Holocaust and WW2 literature (T. Borowski, M. Białoszewski); postcommunist literature)
  • Literary reflexivity, metafiction
  • Cultural memory studies, Holocaust studies
  • Literary/artistic/cultural articulations of (the memory of) traumatic historical events in Central and East Europe
  • Artistic and (pop) cultural representations (in film, music, comics, literature, memoirs, popular culture, on the Internet, etc.) of the Warsaw Rising
  • History of East European comics
  • Reception of Polish/Czech theater directors (T. Kantor, J. Grotowski) and authors (S. Mrożek, W. Gombrowicz, B. Schulz, Witkacy, P. Kohout) in Flemish theater

Possible MA thesis subjects

  • Analysis of Polish literary texts (prose, poetry, drama, ‘non ficton')
  • Artistic and (pop) cultural representations (in film, music, comics, literature, memoirs, popular culture, on the Internet, etc.) of the Warsaw Rising and of other key events in 20th-century Polish history (Katyń, the Holocaust, anticommunist opposition, etc.)
  • Reflexivity/autotematyzm/metafiction in Polish literature (Romantics such as A. Mickiewicz and J. Słowacki; writers from the interbellum period such as W. Gombrowicz, B. Schulz, Witkacy, Z. Nałkowska; postwar writers such as W. Mach or those belonging to the sylwy współczesne; postcommunist writers such as J. Pilch, A. Stasiuk)
  • Polish exile literature (e.g. M. Pankowski)
  • Polish literature and WW2 (T. Borowski, M. Białoszewski, W. Szpilman, etc.)
  • Reception of Polish/Czech theater directors (T. Kantor, J. Grotowski) and authors (S. Mrożek, W. Gombrowicz, B. Schulz, Witkacy, P. Kohout) in Flemish theater
  • Reception of Polish literature in the Low Countries (translations, literary criticism, imagology, etc.)

Relevant publications

https://biblio.ugent.be/person/801001416055 (complete bibliography and full texts)

  • DDB, "The Janus-Faced Author: Narrative Unreliability and Metafiction in Karol Irzykowski's Pałuba and Witold Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke", Russian Literature 62/4, 2007, 401-422.
  • DDB, "The Problem of Autotematyzm in Polish Literary Criticism, or How to Immobilize a Perpetuum Mobile of Nothingness", in: David S. Danaher & Kris Van Heuckelom (eds.), Perspectives on Slavic Literatures. Proceedings of the First International "Perspectives on Slavistics" Conference (Leuven, Sep­tember 17-19, 2004). (series: Pegasus Oost-Europese Studies 6), 2007, 127-139. Amsterdam: Pegasus.
  • DDB, "An Eye for an I. Telling as Reading in Bruno Schulz’s Fiction". In: Elke D'hoker & Gunther Martens (eds.): Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel (series: Narratologia 14), 2008, 209-227. Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • DDB & Kris Van Heuckelom, "Artistic Reflexivity and Interartistic Contamination in Polish Modernism. The Graphic and Literary Works of Bruno Schulz". Symposium 62/3, 2008, 175-192.
  • DDB, "Literary Polemics in/on Polish Modernism: the Case of Gombrowicz and Schulz", Slavica Gandensia 35 (Belgian Contributions to the 14th International Congress of Slavists. Ohrid, 10-16 Sep. 2008), 2008, 9-22.
  • DDB, "Masterpiece or Poetical Workshop? Karol Irzykowski’s Pałuba as a Literary Work". In: Sandra Birzer, Miriam Finkelstein & Imke Mendoza (eds), Proceedings of the Second International Perspectives on Slavistics Conference (Regensburg 2006) (series: Die Welt der Slaven. Sammelbände/Sborniki 36, ed. P. Rehder & I. Smirnov), 2009, 207-215. München: Otto Sagner.
  • DDB & Kris Van Heuckelom (eds), (Un)masking Bruno Schulz. New Combinations, Further Fragmentations, Ultimate Reintegrations. (series: Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics 54), 2009. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. (529 pp.)
  • DDB & Kris Van Heuckelom, "Introduction. Seven Decades of Schulzology". In: Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom (eds), (Un)masking Bruno Schulz. New Combinations, Further Fragmentations, Ultimate Reintegrations. (series: Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics 54), 2009, 9-25. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.
  • DDB, "'The Lie Always Floats to the Surface like Oil.' Toward a Metafictional Reading of Karol Irzykowski’s Pałuba and Bruno Schulz’s Fiction". In: Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom (eds), (Un)masking Bruno Schulz. New Combinations, Further Fragmentations, Ultimate Reintegrations. (series: Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics 54), 2009, 83-133. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.
  • DDB & Michel De Dobbeleer, "Mastering the Siege. Ideology and the Plot of the Leningrad Blockade and the Warsaw Uprising in Adamovich and Granin, and Białoszewski", Primerjalna Književnost 32/2, 2009, 53-76.
  • DDB, "Patriotism of Tomorrow? The Commemoration and Popularization of the Warsaw Rising Through Comics", Slovo 22/2, 2010, 46-65.
  • DDB, "World War 2.0. Commemorating War and Holocaust in Poland Through Facebook", Digital Icons 4, 2010, 45-62. (Special Issue: War, Conflict and Commemoration in the Age of Digital Reproduction, ed. Adi Kuntsman).