Invited Experts

Robert Eaglestone is professor of contemporary literature and thought at Royal Holloway, University of London. He works on contemporary literature and literary theory, contemporary philosophy and on Holocaust and Genocide studies. He is the author of numerous books, including The Holocaust and the Postmodern (2004), Contemporary Fiction (2013), The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature (2017) and Doing English (fourth edition, 2017). He is the editor or co-editor of volumes such as Derrida’s Legacies (2008) and The Future of Trauma Theory (2013). His work has been translated into several languages.

Prof. Marina Balina – Isaac Funk Professor and Professor of Russian Studies Emerita at Illinois Wesleyan University. The focus of her scholarship is on historical and theoretical aspects of twentieth-century Russian children’s literature. She is editor and co-editor of eleven volumes, most recently on Hans Christian Andersen and Russia, University Press of Southern Denmark, 2020. Her collective monograph (with Serguei Oushakine) entitled The Pedagogy of Images: Teaching Communism to Children came out in 2021 from the University of Toronto Press. Balina is the recipient of national and international grants, among them National Endowment for Humanities, American Comparative Literature Association, The Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Centre, and German Academic Exchange (DAAD). As a guest professor, she has taught at the University of Nottingham (UK), University of Salzburg (Austria), University of Hamburg (Germany), and the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
More: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/
​E-mail: mbalina@iwu.edu​

Zohar Shavit, former incumbent of the Porter Chair of Semiotics and Culture Research, is a full professor emerita at the School for Cultural Studies and the former Chairperson of the Program in Research of Child and Youth Culture at Tel Aviv University. She is an internationally renowned authority on the history of Israeli culture, child and youth culture, and Hebrew and Jewish cultures, especially in the context of their relations with various European cultures. Her books include Poetics of Children's Literature (1986), Deutsch-Jüdische Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Ein literaturgeschichtlicher Grundriß [German-Jewish Literature for Children and Adolescents: A Literary-Historical Outline] (together with Annegret Völpel, 2002, A Past Without Shadow: Constructing the Past in German Books for Children (2005) and The Library of the Haskalah (in Hebrew, together with Shmuel Feiner, Natalie Naimark-Goldberg and Tal Kogman, 2014).

Photo by Maciej Zakrzewski

Prof. dr hab. Przemysław Czapliński – one of the most important Polish literary critics, literary historian, full professor, works at the Institute of Polish Philology at the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań.

He has received many important awards, incl. the Ludwik Fryde Award, awarded by the International Association of Literary Criticism, the Literary Award of the Kościelski Foundation, the Prime Minister Award, the Kazimierz Wyka Award, the Medal of Merit for Culture Gloria Artis awarded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, the Jan Długosz Award, the Award of the Marshal of Wielkopolska in the field of artistic creation, dissemination and protection of cultural goods, the award of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages ​​awarded to the best edited multi-author scientific book (AATSEEL Annual Award for the Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume) for Being Poland: A New History of Polish Literature and Culture since 1918, edited by Tamara Trojanowska, Joanna Niżyńska, and Przemysław Czapliński, with the assistance of Agnieszka Polakowska (University of Toronto Press, 2018).

He is the author of many important works in the field of Polish literary studies. These are i.a. Ślady przełomu. O prozie polskiej 1976–1996 (1997), Wzniosłe tęsknoty. Nostalgia w prozie lat dziewięćdziesiątych (2001), Ruchome marginesy: szkice o literaturze lat 90 (2002), Świat podrobiony. Krytyka i literatura wobec nowej rzeczywistości (2003), Powrót centrali. Literatura w nowej rzeczywistości (2007), Polska do wymiany. Późna nowoczesność i nasze wielkie narracje (2009), Resztki nowoczesności. Dwa studia o literaturze i życiu (2011), The Remnants of Modernity. Two Essays on Sarmatism and Utopia in Polish Contemporary Literature (2015) and Poruszona mapa (2016). ​

He writes about the Holocaust, Polish-Jewish relations and their literary representations. He co-edited (with Ewa Domańska) Zagłada. Współczesne problemy rozumienia i przedstawiania (Holocaust. Contemporary problems of understanding and representation) in 2009, and (with Alina Molisak) Tożsamość po pogromie. Świadectwa i interpretacje Marca '68 (Identity after the pogrom. Testimonies and interpretations of March '68) in 2019.