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SUMMARY:Translating East-Central Europe After 1989: Regionality and Polish
 ness in the Works of Jerzy Pilch
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260615T130000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260615T140000
DTSTAMP:20260608T134956Z
UID:ad7e50e2-2d63-f111-ab0d-7c1e52046848
CREATED:20260608T113344Z
DESCRIPTION:According to literary scholar Wojciech Browarny\, the 1990s wi
 tnessed a “reorientation of the mental map” of East-Central Europe. In
  the case of Poland\, the collapse of the repressive and ideological under
 pinnings of Marxist-Leninism led to seismic shifts in all aspects of mater
 ial life\, including publishing. Just as state-run publishing houses were 
 privatized and the central apparatus of censorship was liquidated\, new lo
 ci of literary production began to appear throughout regional capitals and
  provincial towns. The decentralization of literary production coincided w
 ith a thematic about-turn within writing\, as certain authors interested i
 n regional themes achieved national distribution and attention.\n\nThis ta
 lk focuses on one such nationally-prominent “regional” author\, Jerzy 
 Pilch (1952-2020)\, whose autofictional works of the 1990s consistently en
 gage with the region of Cieszyn Silesia. A historically-distinct\, mountai
 nous region currently divided between Poland and Czechia\, Cieszyn Silesia
  is home to Poland’s largest Lutheran population. Translating his experi
 ence of regional life and otherness into nationally-legible satire\, Pilch
  defines Cieszyn Silesian identity as a strictly religious construct\; the
  heroes of Pilch’s early novels agonize over the perceived incompatibili
 ty of Protestantism with wider Polish norms\, just as they reveal an almos
 t pathological need to prove their Polishness\, often through allusions to
  the literary canon\, both state-sanctioned and underground. I argue that 
 Pilch’s work offers a particularly interesting case study in the continu
 ities and contradictions of Poland’s post-1989 mental map\, a reading ai
 ded by the employment of co-cultural communication theory\, a framework fo
 r understanding representation strategies used by non-dominant groups.\n\n
 My analysis of regionality in Pilch’s work is informed by my own work tr
 anslating his 1993 novel\, Spis cudzołożnic. Proza podróżna (The Regis
 ter of Adulteresses: A Sentimental Journey\, co-translated with Antonia Ll
 oyd-Jones\, forthcoming with Open Letter Books). As such\, the talk will e
 xamine the specific challenges we faced translating the work for a contemp
 orary Anglophone readership.\n\nJess Jensen Mitchell is a literary transla
 tor and researcher. She recently received her doctorate in Slavic Language
 s and Literatures from Harvard University. Her doctoral thesis\, ‘Still 
 Nothing About Silesia’: Codifying Regional Family Memory in Polish Liter
 ature After 1989\, asks how regionality is constructed within the Polish-l
 anguage literary imagination. Her other scholarly interests include Polish
  diaspora communities in the United States\, 20th-century Polish culture\,
  historical fiction\, and the idea and function of the public intellectual
 . She is an active member of the translation community\, and her work has 
 appeared in Two Lines\, Asymptote\, Hopscotch Translation\, the Penguin Bo
 ok of Polish Short Stories\, and The Tender Translator: Olga Tokarczuk Acr
 oss Languages (Legenda\, forthcoming)\, and The Register of Adulteresses: 
 A Sentimental Journey\, co-translated with Antonia Lloyd-Jones. She produc
 ed the first season of Paraphrasis\, the podcast on translation\, and she 
 is a 2026 resident in the Translators’ Collegium\, generously funded by 
 the Polish Book Institute.
LAST-MODIFIED:20260608T113705Z
SPEAKER:Jess Jensen Mitchell
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