The Woman Artist: Essays in memory of Dorota Filipczak

Abstract

The volume, honoring Professor Dorota Filipczak, whose energetic and fruitful academic career was cut short in 2021, offers a contribution to literary criticism and culture studies, the areas on which her own scholarly endeavors centered. The theme of “the woman artist” was of particular significance both for Filipczak’s inquiry into the work of writers such as Alice Munro, Jane Urquhart, Michèle Roberts or Margaret Laurence, and for her own poetic practice. Rather than focus on her achievements in various fields (as scholar, writer, teacher, poet, and translator), the texts collected in this volume go beyond remembrance and the honoring of an established scholar’s remarkable feats. Despite their undeniable commemorative role, the chapters are an attempt to carry Dorota Filipczak’s academic endeavors forward, into the future, with her own texts serving as prologue and inspiration. The contributors to the volume — representing various fields of the academia — are her friends, colleagues and collaborators, and the essays eloquently testify to her intellectual influence. From more personal reflections and ruminations inspired by Filipczak’s life and work to articles exploring the work of a range of women artists, the volume offers an investigation of various approaches to autobiography, tensions between public personas and private selves, subversive performative personas, transcending religious frameworks of bodily discipline, as well as “toggling” between the human and the nonhuman.