CALL FOR PAPERS 2023 - ENDED

2022-10-21

 Issues 2023

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 The New Trends in Comparative and Genre Studies

Issues related to the research on literary genres have been at the center of interest of "The Problems of Literary Genres" since the journal was founded. The works of Stefania Skwarczyńska and other researchers, known then internationally for their comparative and genological studies, constituted an invitation to a multilingual and multicultural discussion. What does this research field look like today? How has the perception of literary and not only literary genres changed in the era of open and limitless science?

We are interested in texts that raise the following issues:

  • critical genre analysis and comparative studies in the past and today,
  • new and old genres, not only literary,
  • (multi)media genres,
  • trends and fashions and the studies of culture,
  • "life" and "death" of literary genres,
  • literature researcher “toolkit”,
  • genres of popular culture,
  • genre in literature / genre in cinema / genre in media,
  • medium/material and the study of culture.

Volume Editor: Professor Ivo Pospíšil (Masaryk University)

Submissions: February 28, 2023

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 “Free” – no specific theme

As every year, we leave at least one issue of “The Problems of Literary Genres” "free". Thus, we create
an opportunity to publish original texts, which fit the profile of the journal, but do not fit into the current research trends.

We are waiting for previously unpublished scientific articles, essays, reviews of scientific publications (published in 2020–2023), and other texts related to the disciplines: literary studies, cultural and religious sciences, art sciences. The "free" issue should be a space for the presentation of the results of current research that will affect the development of scientific thought in the humanities.

Volume Editor: Anna Zatora, PhD (University of Lodz)

Submissions: March 31, 2023

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Celebrity Culture: Forms, Styles and Genres

There is a tendency to contrast "literature" and "celebrity". Behind this is the belief that "true" literary fame rests on "true greatness," and that celebrity is superficial and fleeting. In the past, however, there have been studies of literary and film celebrities, such subjects as, for example, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Charlie Chaplin, Jean Rhys, and John Dos Passos. In Poland, Stanisław Przybyszewski, and perhaps Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, were undoubtedly celebrated writers. The peak period
of modernism created a symbolic depiction of celebrity life in "Portrait of Dorian Gray". A celebrity is
a popular person, often appearing in the products of the so-called cultural industry. And this can be deduced from the nineteenth century American circuses by P.T. Barnum. Today, however, we need to add the entire internet and numerous social media platforms to these media. Celebrity culture touches the heart of the erstwhile literary activity, devoted to ancient fame from the times of the Muses and Homer. Fama comes from Latin. a word meaning "conversation, gossip, description; reputation, public opinion; renown." The goddess Fama was the epitome of a rumor in Roman mythology. The Latin derivative of fabulare was a colloquial word meaning to speak. Celebrity is a public performance, reception and discursive interpretation of highly visible individual identities. Studies on celebrities today are interdisciplinary and multi-media, although a lot has been written about celebrities in the form of "stars" and "stardom" as part of film studies.

Various relations between fantasy and everyday practices, ordinariness and wonder, and aura of fame are shaped in various media by multi-modal styles, forms and celebrity genres. In this issue, we would like to look at these general mechanisms rather than the issues of individual relationships with gender, race or sexuality. Celebrity formation and practices in contemporary literary and digital culture is the focus of our research interests.

Volume Editor: Professor Jarosław Płuciennik (University of Lodz)

Submissions: June 30, 2023

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Space as a Category of Culture

We would like to dedicate the last issue of "The Problems of Literary Genres" in 2023 to space as
a category of poetics, and even more broadly - a category of culture. We are interested in both methodological approaches: reflection on the tools of geocriticism, geo-aesthetics, humanistic geography or topographical history, as well as analyses of specific spatial experiences (individual and collective) shown/inscribed in the texts of culture/literature. Any textual representation of geographic space can be the subject of study.

We expect texts:

  • on the relationship between the categories of space and memory,
  • on the mechanisms of production of places,
  • describing the construction of identity as derived from/relating to space,
  • being an expressions of sensory perception of space, experiencing it,
  • showing cultural representations of (extra)urban and industrial spaces.

We also hope to receive works focusing on all kinds of boundaries marking some kind of place and descriptions of their crossing. Finally, we also expect texts exploring the genre conditions of spatial categories: autobiography, biography, but also describing such genre conventions in which space acquires the status of an independent quasi-hero, as in all variants of gothicism.  

Volume Editors: 

Associate Professor Agnieszka Izdebska (University of Lodz)

Associate Professor Elżbieta Konończuk (University of Bialystok)

Submissions: July 31, 2023

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Submissions: zrl@uni.lodz.pl