Anna Barcz holds a PhD in literary studies from the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw. Before coming to Munich, she was appointed as the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub (Trinity College Dublin). From 2012 to 2018 she has been associated with the Institute as a research fellow. Since 2015 she has been working as an assistant professor at the University of Bielsko-Biala and has been teaching at the University of Warsaw. Anna has been carrying out research in the field of animal studies and environmental humanities. Her project Socio-Cultural Constructions of Vulnerability and Resilience. German and Polish Perceptions of Threatening Aquatic Phenomena in Odra River Regions (CultCon, 2016-2018) was supported by the Polish and German Research Foundations and conducted in cooperation with The Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space in Erkner. Polish and German literature played a major role in this project by reflecting how people cope with floods and in understanding better the cultural differences between Polish and German environmental performance. Anna’s recent research concentrates on representing non-humans in the environmental history and culture of Soviet Eastern Europe.
RCC Research Project: Lost Landscapes and Broken Human-Animal Bonds: Literature as an Environmental Historiography of Soviet Eastern Europe
Selected Publications:
- "Animals as Subjects of Historical Narratives: Literature and its Impact on History" (in Polish). In Historia i narracje. Od historii lokalnej do opowiesci postantropocentrycznej, edited by R. Makarska, 169–185. Krakow: Universitas, 2019.
- "Under the Ground. The Anthropocene Narratives: Coal and Uranium" (in Polish). In Poetyki ekocydu. Historia, natura, konflikt, edited by A. Ubertowska, D. Korczynska-Partyka, and E. Kulis. Warsaw: Wyd, 2019.
- with P. Buchta-Bartodziej and A. Michalak. "The Oder – a River that Floods: The Problem of Environmental Adaptation in Literary Texts." Environmental Hazards 17, no 3. (2018): 251–267.
- Animal Narratives and Culture: Vulnerable Realism. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.
- Ecorealism: From Ecocriticism to Zoocriticism in Polish Literature (in Polish). Katowice: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Slask, 2016.