From 2 to 8 July this year, the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology hosted a Summer School of the Blended Intensive Programme (Erasmus+) entitled 'Languages of War (in Literature and Other Media)'.
The Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), Université de Haute Alsace (France) and the University of Plovdiv 'Paisii Hilendarski' (Bulgaria) were our partners in this project.
The main goal of the programme was to reflect on how war is represented in art - mainly in literature (but other media were also taken into account - film, computer games, etc.). The reasoning behind this construction of the theme is the conviction that language remains the primary way of modelling the world and thinking (the now historic so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis still shapes an essential part of the reflection of language). As part of the curriculum, students were introduced to elected, pointillist approaches to the philosophy of language (e.g. Wittgenstein) and, above all, they were encouraged to explore the ways of representing war in art (e.g. in the classics of Polish literature: Miłosz, Różewicz, Borowski; film: Wajda's Canal, etc.). Participation of a literary practitioner (writer/writer) was envisaged for students to gain exposure not only to literary artefacts but also to a first-hand account of how the experience of today's unrest shapes contemporary literature.
The sessions were conducted by:
- Piotr Florczyk, Ph.D. (University of Washington, Seattle, US),
- Krzysztof Hoffmann, Ph.D. (Institute of Polish Philology, AMU),
- Sylwia Karolak, Ph.D. (Institute of Polish Philology, AMU),
- Prof. Marek Kaźmierczak (Film, Media and Audiovisual Arts Institute, AMU),
- Christopher Merrill (University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA),
- Małgorzata Miławska-Ratajczak, Ph.D. (Film, Media and Audiovisual Arts Institute, AMU),
- Prof. IS PAN Joanna Roszak (Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences),
- Jurij Serebriansky (University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn),
- Borys Szumanski (Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology, AMU) - psychologist and PhD in translatology,
- Lubov Yakymchuk - Ukrainian poet, playwright and screenwriter,
- Prof. Dorota Walczak-Delanois (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium).
The entire Summer School Summary prepared by Dr Christopher Hoffmann can be found here.