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John Merchant

 
 
Adjunct Professor in Cinema and Comparative Literature
 


Office: E210 AJB
Phone:
john-merchant@uiowa.edu
Background:

My primary research/teaching field is the cultural relationship between Poland and Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My work focuses on the need for and challenges to Polish and Irish cultural nationalism and identity politics in the absence of political autonomy. This includes the readings and translations of Thomas Moore by the Polish Romantics, Polish-Irish "family" tales, and the critical reception of the cultural nationalism of Irish-Ireland by Young Poland. In particular, I am interested in exploring the links between the emerging Polish and Irish national theaters prior to World War I, both in terms of their harmony with and opposition to broader developments in early European modernism.

 
Research Areas:

The cultural relationship between Poland and Ireland (19-20c), Polish émigré literature and culture, contemporary Polish-American fiction, and Polish cinema.

 

Publications:

The Impact of Irish-Ireland on Young Poland, 1890-1918, accepted for publication by East European Monograph Series. Forthcoming, March 2008.

"Between History and the Imagination: Polish Post-War Poetry," accepted for publication in First Things. Forthcoming.

Stanislaw Wyspianski, The Legend (work in progress).

Boleslaw Lesmian, Posthumous Escapades (work in progress).

 
Courses Taught:

Spring 2008:  "Between the Art and the Nation: Polish and Irish Drama"