Stepek Lecturer in Polish Studies since October 1994 and the Comparative Literature Programme Co-ordinator since October 2003. MA (University of Lodz, Poland), 1986; PhD in Comparative Literature (Penn State University, USA), 1995.
Fields of interest include Polish language and literature, 20th-century comparative drama, Polish theatre and cinema, Polish-Jewish studies, Holocaust literature, gender studies and cultural studies.
Publications include critical articles on Tadeusz Różewicz and Edward Albee; Witold Gombrowicz and Luigi Pirandello, an entry on Waclav Iwaniuk for DLB, two articles on twentieth-century female playwrights and various literary reviews published in Slavica, East European Jewish Affairs, The Modern Language Review and Slavonic and East European Review.
The collection of essays Studies in Language, Literature, and Cultural Mythology in Poland. Investigating "the Other" , edited by Elwira Grossman, was published by The Edwin Mellen Press in August 2002.
This volume is dedicated to the memory of Donald P.A. Pirie (23 April 1956-02 January 1997) who was the Stepek Lecturer in Polish at the University of Glasgow from 1984 to 1994 and continued his research in Polish Studies as an Honorary Research Fellow of the Department of Slavonic Studies until his death in 1997. He promoted a wider knowledge of Poland in various forms and by different means. He published several articles on Polish literature, edited three books on Polish culture, and prepared the anthology Young Poets of a New Poland (1993), which includes his own translations of the youngest generation of Polish poets. In 1989 Donald organised a series of events in Glasgow under the title Polish Realities. The Arts in Poland 1980-1989. He also organised three major conferences devoted to Polish literature and invited Andrzej Wajda, Tadeusz Różewicz and Ewa Lipska to meet with the public in Glasgow. Not only was Donald an accomplished scholar and a distinguished translator of Polish poetry, he was also an enthusiastic teacher, cherished by his students and colleagues. A bibliography of the major works written and edited by Donald ends this collection of articles.
Elwira Grossman is currently working on a monograph devoted to twentieth-century Polish women playwrights. Her favourite Polish writers are Tadeusz Różewicz, Marian Pankowski, Amelia Hertz, Anna Świrszczyńska, Teresa Lubkiewicz-Urbanowicz, Jadwiga Maurer, Manuela Gretkowska and Hanna Samson. She considers Tadeusz Kantor's Cricot 2 to be one of the most unique theatrical phenomena that ever existed, and films directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Jan Jakub Kolski, Agnieszka Holland and Dorota Kędzierzawska to be the most interesting examples of Polish cinema.
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