Polish Journal for American Studies最新文献

{"title":"Contemporary American Cinema: Thrills to Narratives and Back","authors":"Beata Zawadka","doi":"10.7311/pjas.16/2022.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7311/pjas.16/2022.01","url":null,"abstract":"This article is an introduction to the following essays pertaining to contemporary American cinema, summarizing the contents of those essays, as well as providing a brief outline of American cinema.","PeriodicalId":384144,"journal":{"name":"Polish Journal for American Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116513416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Hero Who Disappointed: Images of Lajos Kossuth and the Hungarian Revolution of 1848/49 in Livermore’s Zoë; or the Quadroon’s Triumph","authors":"Deniz Bozkurt-Pekár","doi":"10.7311/pjas.16/2022.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7311/pjas.16/2022.06","url":null,"abstract":"This article studies US American perceptions of the European Revolutions of 1848/49, especially the different receptions of the Hungarian revolutionary leader Lajos Kossuth’s sojourn in the US, through an analysis of a rather unknown novel Zoë; or the Quadroon’s Triumph (1855). Benefiting from different sources, the article examines the impacts of the revolutions of Europe in the US literary, cultural, religious, and political sceneries by pointing to how even non-canonical works reflected upon these influences.","PeriodicalId":384144,"journal":{"name":"Polish Journal for American Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125808458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"We Have Always Lived in the Mind: The Freudian Topographic Model of the Mind as Depicted in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)","authors":"Jacqueline Wiktoria Woroniec","doi":"10.7311/pjas.16/2022.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7311/pjas.16/2022.07","url":null,"abstract":"The literary setting of Shirley Jackson’s 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle is eerie, symbolic, and inextricably interconnected with the main characters of the book. The Blackwood family, haunted by its macabre past, is confined to its mansion, which is a manifestation of its dwellers’ troubled minds. The Blackwoods abide in a reciprocal influence with their house, the titular castle. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the discourse on Jackson’s work and to illustrate a symbolic rather than mimetic reading of the novel. The theory of psychoanalysis, and more specifically the concept of the Freudian topographic model of the mind, is used to characterize the novel’s setting and its foreground characters. The paper identifies the three focal characters with Freudian archetypes of id, ego, and superego, and uses the theory to further analyze the relationships between the characters to prove they are each ruled by one of the archetypes. Then, it places the characters within the plane of the Blackwood mansion to demonstrate the house’s psychological agency over its dwellers. This is achieved by comparing the mansion’s floors to the Freudian levels of consciousness. Such an interpretation not only compares the Blackwood family to a single entity, a shared mind, but also includes the house as an integral part of its manifestation.","PeriodicalId":384144,"journal":{"name":"Polish Journal for American Studies","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133873195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Becoming Real to Oneself: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne","authors":"Justyna Fruzińska","doi":"10.7311/pjas.16/2022.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7311/pjas.16/2022.05","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on three American Romantic writers: Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, examining the problem of ghostliness or life not fully lived present in their works. The point of departure for the present discussion is Arnold Weinstein’s analysis of Hawthorne’s short story “Wakefield,” suggesting that the main goal of its protagonist is an attempt to become real to himself. This paper finds similar issues to the ones tackled by Hawthorne in the essays by R.W. Emerson and H.D. Thoreau, and argues that the method applied by Wakefield, which is looking at one’s life from a distance, is also present in the two Transcendentalists’ writings, though often as a danger rather than a wished-for solution of the problem.","PeriodicalId":384144,"journal":{"name":"Polish Journal for American Studies","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129777137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How Much Do Bench Players Matter in the NBA? A Case Study of the Seattle SuperSonics/Oklahoma City Thunder|","authors":"Łukasz Muniowski","doi":"10.7311/pjas.16/2022.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7311/pjas.16/2022.08","url":null,"abstract":"The National Basketball Association offers only 150 starting spots to the best basketball players in the world–five on each of the 30 teams it consists of–and, considering such factors as personal preferences, luck and salary cap, it is possible that a bench player on one team would be not so much a starter, but one of the two-three best players on a different one. This article analyzes two basketball players, Detlef Schrempf and Jim McIlvaine, whose career narratives will be discussed have played for the Seattle SuperSonics, a franchise which eventually relocated to the state of Oklahoma and became the Oklahoma City Thunder. By narrowing the focus of this article to one franchise–as the Thunder are the extension of the Sonics–I want to highlight two issues. Firstly, I want to show individual involvement in sports history, how two players can shape the fate of a franchise. The fact that both were reserves before coming to Seattle highlights the importance of every personnel decision in running a team. Secondly, while it can be argued that such players may be found in the history of each of the other 29 NBA teams, Seattle/Oklahoma is significant because of the relocation that took place in 2008, effectively ending high-profile men’s professional basketball in Seattle. Hopefully this article adds a new perspective to the scholarship already devoted to the issue, dealing with the depiction and the repercussions of the move.","PeriodicalId":384144,"journal":{"name":"Polish Journal for American Studies","volume":"124 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121379311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is It Gender or Is It Race? To Kill a Mockingbird and Its Film Adaptation","authors":"Constante Gonzáles Groba","doi":"10.7311/pjas.16/2022.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7311/pjas.16/2022.02","url":null,"abstract":"This article begins by exploring the national climate in which Lee’s novel appeared, at the height of the civil rights movement in the South, which had a crucial impact on its composition and reception. The major film studios were not initially interested in the novel, but independent filmmakers Alan Pakula (producer) and Robert Mulligan (director), influenced by existentialism, felt attracted to stories with strong dramatization over the spectacular. The film is famously characterized by the voice-over narration of the adult Scout, which embodies a paradoxical duality of perspective: the events are seen from the perspective of the young Scout but described in the language of a mature and articulate adult Scout. In the novel, the destabilization of gender norms is the central theme, and the protagonist is clearly Scout going through the pains of growing up female in a South with very strict definitions of gender roles. This dimension is not prominent in the film version, which gave in to the demands of the Hollywood star system and made the girl’s father, played by Gregory Peck, the main character, and made racism the main issue. The article concludes with a necessary reconsideration of Atticus Finch, subjected in recent years to the complaint that both the novel and the film convey the historically inaccurate message that heroic whites, instead of blacks, were the leaders of the anti-racist movements of the twentieth century. Atticus Finch no doubt remains tied to the accommodating values of his class and he never openly questions the structural racism of which he himself is part, but moral horizons of previous eras are often narrow in comparison with our own, and we should avoid the excesses of presentism and maintain the historical perspective that allows us to celebrate the courage and success of fictional white liberals like Atticus and real ones like Harper Lee herself, who could only speak as whites, not as black victims. Despite all its limitations, Mockingbird did contribute to making hearts and minds reconsider race in America, and it remains a socially and historically important film. Thus, we should at least acknowledge its merit in taking a stand during a period when many films avoided controversial racial matters.","PeriodicalId":384144,"journal":{"name":"Polish Journal for American Studies","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121349708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What Was Expected of William Gibson’s Early Fiction: Themes in Negative Reception","authors":"P. Stachura","doi":"10.7311/pjas.12/2/2018.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7311/pjas.12/2/2018.06","url":null,"abstract":"The article presents various reader responses to Gibson’s early fiction, ranging from reviews, through general discussions of Gibson and cyberpunk, through writings by fans, to scholarly articles. Most of the texts under discussion are relatively recent. The aim of the analysis was to determine what is the function of Gibson’s work nowadays, and what stylistic and thematic features matter for today’s readers. The conclusion is that Gibson’s Neuromancer has been treated as an epic work, performing an “epic incantation” comparable to the functions and stylistics of Walt Whitman’s nation-building poetry, but critics have so far been preoccupied mostly with the ideological aspects of the novel, rather than its literary qualities.","PeriodicalId":384144,"journal":{"name":"Polish Journal for American Studies","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124071364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Looking Back, 2018-1916: The Cosmopolitan Idea in Randolph Bourne’s ‘Transnational America”","authors":"Piotr Skurowski","doi":"10.7311/pjas.12/1/2018.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7311/pjas.12/1/2018.04","url":null,"abstract":"This article re-examines the classic 1916 text by Randolph Bourne, considered a forerunner of today’s multiculturalism, to demonstrate how Bourne’s cosmopolitanism (defined as transnationalism) related to the ideological and intellectual currents of the Progressive Era, and how it registers with today’s readers’ different sensibilities (vis-a-vis issues like race, ethnicity and democracy) as well as some of the new theoretical perspectives on cosmopolitanism and transnationalism. While the article argues for an unceasing relevancy of Bourne’s text, it also identifies the problems today’s readers may have with it, most importantly with the author’s Eurocentrism as well as the exceptionalist underpinnings of his argument.","PeriodicalId":384144,"journal":{"name":"Polish Journal for American Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123779191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Where East Meets West: On Some Locations of America","authors":"T. Rachwał","doi":"10.7311/pjas.12/1/2018.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7311/pjas.12/1/2018.03","url":null,"abstract":"The paper offers a reading of the westward movement of the American frontier as a passage to an imaginary land in which the actual topographical displacement is accompanied by various, sometimes contradictory, images of the future. The settlers envisioned various Americas, the visions coming from their own experiences as well as from the stereotypically European projection of America as a paradise and as an object of possession. Such, sometimes contradictory, visions are noticeable in attempts at conceptualizing the frontier and its significance not only (explicitly) by Turner, but also less directly by such writers and thinkers as Thoreau, Whitman, or Bourne. Their Americas are in fact imaginary constructs reworking the encounter of East and West, frequently mixing not only discovery with invention, but also relocating, like Whitman in “Passage to India,” two of the cardinal directions of the world and thus, as it were, “transnationalizing” America.","PeriodicalId":384144,"journal":{"name":"Polish Journal for American Studies","volume":"78 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113997030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introducing William Gibson. Or Not.","authors":"P. Frelik","doi":"10.7311/pjas.12/2/2018.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7311/pjas.12/2/2018.01","url":null,"abstract":"In the early 21st-century science ction writers are busy, but few are busier than William Gibson. Born in 1948, the American-Canadian writer is the author of eleven novels (including one in collaboration with Bruce Sterling), some two dozens of short stories (only half of which have been collected to date), a screenplay for a major Hollywood movie (Johnny Mnemonic, 1995), scripts for two television series episodes (“Kill Switch” S5E11 and “First Person Shooter” S7E13 for e X-Files), an unproduced script for Alien 3, a ve-part comic book (Archangel, 2016-17), a work of electronic cyber-poetry (Agrippa: A Book of the Dead, 1992), and numerous articles in cultural magazines and newspapers. Gibson is also a compulsive Twitter-user with some 150,000 tweets, although, to be fair, the tally also includes retweets. Depending on a perspective, these numbers are either decent but not astounding for a writer who has just turned 70 (there are science ction writers who have for decades produced a novel every two years or so) or impressive since they do not really convey the magnitude of Gibson’s cultural stature. Gibson is credited with the invention of the word “cyberspace” in “Burning Chrome” (1982).1 He has been repeatedly hailed as the (god)father of cyberpunk whose recognition seems to have dominated the movement to such an extent that it prompted Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. to declare that “most of the literary cyberpunks bask in the light of the one major writer who is original and gi ed enough to make the whole movement seem original and gi ed” (185). In the years a er the publication of e Di erence Engine (1990), co-written with Bruce Sterling, he has been identi ed as central to the coalescence of steampunk as a recognizable moniker. His more recent novels, particularly the so-called Blue Ant trilogy, have been praised for their attention to the ows and circulations of late capitalism.2 William Gibson is also one of science ction’s master stylists, whose tone and cadence remain recognizable to those well-read in the genre, from the dreamy quality of “Fragments of the Hologram Rose” (1977), his rst published work, and Neuromancer (1984) to the understated, hilarious wit of o anded descriptions, like the one of a London club early on in Zero History (2010): “ e decorators had kept it down, here, which was","PeriodicalId":384144,"journal":{"name":"Polish Journal for American Studies","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133637193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}