Meet the visiting graduate students from Poland on the Joanna DeMone Award at the University of Toronto for 2024-25!
Michalina Wesołowska
I am a doctoral student at the Doctoral School of Languages and Literatures and a researcher in the Children’s Literature & Culture Research Team at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. My academic interests focus on children's literature translation studies and adaptation studies. In my PhD dissertation, I examine the English and Polish storyworlds surrounding L.M. Montgomery's character, Anne Shirley.
During my research in Toronto, I am mapping the storyworld related to Anne Shirley. I explore the reception of L.M. Montgomery's work through various forms of textual transformations, adaptations, and rewritings. The Joanna DeMone Award has provided me with a unique opportunity to deepen my knowledge of both Canadian and Polish literature. While at the University of Toronto, I am conducting extensive library research and visiting locations connected to L.M. Montgomery.
Monika Kopcik
I am a doctoral student at the University of Warsaw, specializing in poststructuralist genre theory and East-Central European modernism. My dissertation focuses on the cultural mobility documented in the letters of the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. I aim to demonstrate that correspondence provides a unique insight into the trajectories of artistic transfers that shaped identity formation in modern nation-states.
During my time at the University of Toronto, I will examine how the spatio-temporal aspects of letter writing influenced the discourse of identity among the mobile artistic intelligentsia of interwar Poland. I am grateful to the Joanna DeMone Award for providing me with the support of Polish Studies scholars and access to the excellent UofT libraries. While in Toronto, I will write chapter of my dissertation, which situates the understudied artistic networks of East-Central Europe within the context of global modernism.
Click here to read the complete (past and present) award recipient list.