Robert Kusek
Biographic Data
| ID | 4883924 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Kusek |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Kusek |
| SIGNATURE | KUSEK R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Jagiellonian University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9969-0221 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
In Poland, or Elsewhere
The paper compares how Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The King of the Fields and Dan Jacobson’s The God-Fearer re-configure and remap Central Europe - Poland in particular. By closely studying how Singer and Jacobson modify spatial, temporal and historical configurations of their distant homeland, the essay attempts to reconstruct the books’ similar yet different imaginaries of the region and its traumatic history. The paper acknowledges the influence t…
“Two Silver Herrings for My Granddaughter”
The piece addresses Deborah Levy’s long-standing dialogue with Central European history and cultural production and the impact that the latter exerted onto her works, including her “living autobiography”. It also showcases various modes of cultural exchange and transnational affinities between the global West and East in the Cold War period
After Auto/Biography
In recent years one has observed the rise of new forms of (self-) life-storying, not only as a means of expressing one’s dissatisfaction with the turn-of-the-21st-century auto/biographical boom but also as a manifestation of the crisis of both the auto/biographical self and form. These new self-narratives ostensibly resist the canonical “laws” of auto/biographical writing yet eagerly embrace real events from the authors’ lives. This article discu…
Dusklands
The article investigates a visual dossier of the transnational history of violence that Coetzee created while working on Dusklands. Special attention will be paid to a number of images depicting Nazi atrocities committed in Central Europe in the late 1930s and early 1940s which have so far failed to attract the attention of Coetzee scholarship due to their incongruence with the rest of the Dusklands research materials. The paper will argue that t…
J.M. Coetzee in Kakania
We Belong Here
This paper studies a body of hybrid non-fiction works that lie at the intersection of queer and nature writing and which articulate a new conceptualisation the queer subject’s relationship with rurality. Those pioneering narratives – which for the purpose of the present research have been labelled “queer new nature writing” – do not offer a simple reversal of the traditional mode of thinking about the agonistic character of the queer-rural dyad. …
South Africa-sur-Nemunas1
The paper investigates the representation of Central Europe and its hinterlands in selected works by 20th-century South African writers. It pays special attention to Dan Jacobson’s Heshel’s Kingdom about Jacobson’s travel to Lithuania in search of the writer’s “middle-European” patrimony. Drawing on previously unpublished archival records, the study argues that Jacobson’s book merges Central European hinterlands (their histories, identities, land…
From the Heart of the Country to the European Core
The aim of this article is to investigate Coetzee’s decades-long, multifaceted, and, essentially, transnational dialogue with Poland and its cultural production—from Coetzee’s encounter of Polish poetry in the early 1960s until his 2022 novel El polaco. It intends to argue that Coetzee’s preoccupation with Polish literature and culture is part of a larger strategy of seeking new alliances and partnerships across the north-south/east-west divide, …
“Nie zdołam wejść w jej buty ani los”. O biografii jako auto/biografii w twórczości drugiego pokolenia
Artykuł proponuje nową perspektywę w badaniu auto/biograficznej twórczości potomków ocalałych z Zagłady, tj. potraktowanie biografii jako modusu drugopokoleniowej autobiografii. Na podstawie analizy książki Agaty Tuszyńskiej Oskarżona: Wiera Gran (2010) o ocalałej z Zagłady żydowsko-polskiej śpiewaczce autorzy argumentują, że w tym przypadku biografia ocalałej staje się laboratorium rozumienia własnego doświadczenia dla przedstawicielki pokolenia…
Curing Oneself of One's (Father)Land
In the opening section of his 2017 memoir An Odyssey, the American writer and scholar Daniel Mendelsohn aptly notes that the English language has a number of nouns to describe the act of moving in space from one point to another. While “voyage,” due to its Latin provenance is “saturated in the material”2 (Lat. viaticum, i.e. provisions for a journey), and “journey,” which originates in the Old French word jornee (meaning day or its portion), poin…
Niesamowite dziecko" Europy Środkowej. Deborah Levy i oduczanie się "swojości
Autor proponuje nową perspektywę badań nad horyzontalną wymianą kulturową pomiędzy literaturą południowoafrykańską a Europą Środkową - taką, w której Europa Środkowa jest nie tylko tematem czy źródłem inspiracji dla literatury południowoafrykańskiej, lecz przede wszystkim jej potencjalną historią. Tekst wskazuje na potrzebę rozpoznania dystynktywnego południowoafrykańskiego modusu pisania oraz lektury historii, tożsamości i geografii, który ma si…
Przypadkowy turysta? John Maxwell Coetzee w Europie Środkowej – rekonesans
The article’s aim is to reflect upon the transgenerational and transnational sustainability of Central European memory in literary and cultural space of South Africa. It also investigates links between John Maxwell Coetzee’s oeuvre, as well as works by other South African authors (e.g. Dan Jacobson, Lionel Abrahams, Deborah Levy), with cultural and, above all, literary universe of Central Europe. While analysing selected literary and cultural tex…
Travelling Texts
Travelling Texts: J.M. Coetzee and Other Writers is a collection of essays on mutual influences and inspirations between authors, with a special focus on J.M. Coetzee. Bringing together a group of international scholars, the book offers a wide range of perspectives on how canonical and less canonical texts travel between literatures and cultures. Chapter One is devoted to connections between Coetzee's writings and Polish literature and theatre. C…
From the Heart of the Country to the European Core
The aim of this article is to investigate Coetzee’s decades-long, multifaceted, and, essentially, transnational dialogue with Poland and its cultural production—from Coetzee’s encounter of Polish poetry in the early 1960s until his 2022 novel El polaco. It intends to argue that Coetzee’s preoccupation with Polish literature and culture is part of a larger strategy of seeking new alliances and partnerships across the north-south/east-west divide, …
Travelling Texts
Travelling Texts: J.M. Coetzee and Other Writers is a collection of essays on mutual influences and inspirations between authors, with a special focus on J.M. Coetzee. Bringing together a group of international scholars, the book offers a wide range of perspectives on how canonical and less canonical texts travel between literatures and cultures. Chapter One is devoted to connections between Coetzee's writings and Polish literature and theatre. C…
Przypadkowy turysta? John Maxwell Coetzee w Europie Środkowej – rekonesans
The article’s aim is to reflect upon the transgenerational and transnational sustainability of Central European memory in literary and cultural space of South Africa. It also investigates links between John Maxwell Coetzee’s oeuvre, as well as works by other South African authors (e.g. Dan Jacobson, Lionel Abrahams, Deborah Levy), with cultural and, above all, literary universe of Central Europe. While analysing selected literary and cultural tex…
“Nie zdołam wejść w jej buty ani los”. O biografii jako auto/biografii w twórczości drugiego pokolenia
Artykuł proponuje nową perspektywę w badaniu auto/biograficznej twórczości potomków ocalałych z Zagłady, tj. potraktowanie biografii jako modusu drugopokoleniowej autobiografii. Na podstawie analizy książki Agaty Tuszyńskiej Oskarżona: Wiera Gran (2010) o ocalałej z Zagłady żydowsko-polskiej śpiewaczce autorzy argumentują, że w tym przypadku biografia ocalałej staje się laboratorium rozumienia własnego doświadczenia dla przedstawicielki pokolenia…
Curing Oneself of One's (Father)Land
In the opening section of his 2017 memoir An Odyssey, the American writer and scholar Daniel Mendelsohn aptly notes that the English language has a number of nouns to describe the act of moving in space from one point to another. While “voyage,” due to its Latin provenance is “saturated in the material”2 (Lat. viaticum, i.e. provisions for a journey), and “journey,” which originates in the Old French word jornee (meaning day or its portion), poin…
Niesamowite dziecko" Europy Środkowej. Deborah Levy i oduczanie się "swojości
Autor proponuje nową perspektywę badań nad horyzontalną wymianą kulturową pomiędzy literaturą południowoafrykańską a Europą Środkową - taką, w której Europa Środkowa jest nie tylko tematem czy źródłem inspiracji dla literatury południowoafrykańskiej, lecz przede wszystkim jej potencjalną historią. Tekst wskazuje na potrzebę rozpoznania dystynktywnego południowoafrykańskiego modusu pisania oraz lektury historii, tożsamości i geografii, który ma si…
South Africa-sur-Nemunas1
The paper investigates the representation of Central Europe and its hinterlands in selected works by 20th-century South African writers. It pays special attention to Dan Jacobson’s Heshel’s Kingdom about Jacobson’s travel to Lithuania in search of the writer’s “middle-European” patrimony. Drawing on previously unpublished archival records, the study argues that Jacobson’s book merges Central European hinterlands (their histories, identities, land…
From the Heart of the Country to the European Core
The aim of this article is to investigate Coetzee’s decades-long, multifaceted, and, essentially, transnational dialogue with Poland and its cultural production—from Coetzee’s encounter of Polish poetry in the early 1960s until his 2022 novel El polaco. It intends to argue that Coetzee’s preoccupation with Polish literature and culture is part of a larger strategy of seeking new alliances and partnerships across the north-south/east-west divide, …
We Belong Here
This paper studies a body of hybrid non-fiction works that lie at the intersection of queer and nature writing and which articulate a new conceptualisation the queer subject’s relationship with rurality. Those pioneering narratives – which for the purpose of the present research have been labelled “queer new nature writing” – do not offer a simple reversal of the traditional mode of thinking about the agonistic character of the queer-rural dyad. …
“Two Silver Herrings for My Granddaughter”
The piece addresses Deborah Levy’s long-standing dialogue with Central European history and cultural production and the impact that the latter exerted onto her works, including her “living autobiography”. It also showcases various modes of cultural exchange and transnational affinities between the global West and East in the Cold War period
After Auto/Biography
In recent years one has observed the rise of new forms of (self-) life-storying, not only as a means of expressing one’s dissatisfaction with the turn-of-the-21st-century auto/biographical boom but also as a manifestation of the crisis of both the auto/biographical self and form. These new self-narratives ostensibly resist the canonical “laws” of auto/biographical writing yet eagerly embrace real events from the authors’ lives. This article discu…
Dusklands
The article investigates a visual dossier of the transnational history of violence that Coetzee created while working on Dusklands. Special attention will be paid to a number of images depicting Nazi atrocities committed in Central Europe in the late 1930s and early 1940s which have so far failed to attract the attention of Coetzee scholarship due to their incongruence with the rest of the Dusklands research materials. The paper will argue that t…
J.M. Coetzee in Kakania
In Poland, or Elsewhere
The paper compares how Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The King of the Fields and Dan Jacobson’s The God-Fearer re-configure and remap Central Europe - Poland in particular. By closely studying how Singer and Jacobson modify spatial, temporal and historical configurations of their distant homeland, the essay attempts to reconstruct the books’ similar yet different imaginaries of the region and its traumatic history. The paper acknowledges the influence t…
Art (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · History (6 works) · Literature (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Central European Literary Studies (4 works) · Poetry (4 works) · Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies (4 works) · South African History and Culture (4 works) · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies (3 works)