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Renata IngbrantSenior Lecturer

About me

 

Associate Professor in Slavic Languages with a specialization in Polish, Senior Lecturer in Polish Studies. PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures (2007) after doctoral studies at the Department of Slavic Languages at Stockholm University and the Baltic and East European Graduate School (BEEGS) at Södertörn University. Deputy Head and Head of the Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages, Finnish, Dutch, and German from 2021 to 2024.

I have been affiliated with the Department of Slavic Languages (now the Section for Slavic Languages) since the 1990s, initially studying Russian and Polish, then continuing as a doctoral student in Slavic languages and later as a lecturer in Polish. In 2001, I was admitted as a doctoral student at the Baltic and East European Graduate School (BEEGS) at Södertörn University, where my dissertation was supervised by Professor Leonard Neuger (Stockholm University) and Professor Ebba Witt-Brattström (Södertörn University). I defended my dissertation in 2007 on the poet Anna Świrszczyńska, titled From Her Point of View: Woman's Anti-World in the poetry of Anna Świrszczyńska. After completing my PhD, I returned to Stockholm University as a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher. Since then, I have taught Polish, Polish literature, culture, and history at all levels, developed independent courses, and supervised numerous bachelor’s and master’s theses.

Teaching

Freestanding courses

The Holocaust in Polish literature

The Land of Contrasts - Poland after 1989

Academic years 2023 – 2024

Polish 1

Pronunciation and Phonetics

Oral Proficiency

Polish 2

Morphology and word formation

Polish 3

Syntax and Phraseology

 

 

Research

Keywords: modern Polish literature; women's history; Anna Świrszczyńska's poetry; cultural memory studies; gender studies.

Projects
2024–2025: Północ–Południe: Polszczyzna na krańcach Europy / North-South: Polish at the Edges of Europe. Connecting Cultures through Language, Literature, and History (Project funded by NAWA – Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange).

Project Leader: Ewa Cybulska-Bohuszewicz, IBL (The Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences), Warsaw, Poland.

Partner Universities: Stockholm University, Vilnius University, University of Turku, Istanbul University, Kilis 7 Aralik University.

2011–2014: In Search of the New Man: Changing Masculinities in Late-Nineteenth-Century Polish Novels, funded by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (post-doc in "Living Language").

  • In Search of the New Man: Changing Masculinities in Late Nineteenth-Century Polish Novels (Published in Polish Review, 2014)
  • The "New Man" and Male Homosocial Desire in Late Nineteenth-Century Novels (Published in Mundo eslavo, 2014)

2008–2010: Masculinity in the Age of Immaturity. Social Debates in the Polish Press Post-1989, funded by the Ahlström and Terserus Foundation.

 

Publications

Fortcoming: "Olga Tokarczuk in Sweden and in Swedish." 2025. Renata Ingbrant & Lisa Mendoza Åsberg. In: The Tender Translator. Olga Tokarczuk Across Languages. Ed. Kasia Szymanska & Joanna Trzeciak Huss. 

https://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Tender-Translator

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Special Issue: Jagiellonian Heritage in Poland, Lithuania, Sweden and Finland

    2022. Ewa Cybulska-Bohuszewicz, Renata Ingbrant. Scando-Slavica 68 (2), 203-212

    Article

    This special issue of Scando-Slavica is devoted to the Polish-Lithuanian-Swedish-Finnish heritage relating to the Jagiellonian dynasty, and for obvious reasons revolves around the person of Queen Catherine Jagiellon (Polish: Katarzyna Jagiellonka, Lithuanian: Kotryna Jogailaitė, Swedish: Katarina Jagellonica, Finnish: Katariina Jagellonica; 1 November 1526 – 16 September 1583) and her legacy. Articles collected in this issue are the result of the project “Jagiellonian Heritage as a platform for dialogue between Poland and Finland”, financed by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA), carried out between October and December 2020 under the leadership of Ewa Cybulska-Bohuszewicz (Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw) in cooperation with University of Jyväskylä in Finland represented by Susanna Niiranen. The aims of the project were twofold: presenting and promoting the legacy of the Jagiellonians in the Nordic countries and creating a network of researchers from various academic centres in Poland, Sweden, Finland and Lithuania who undertook the task of mapping ongoing research, identifying different historical sources found in national archives and libraries and defining common features in the history and culture of these countries.

    Read more about Special Issue

  • THE TRANSGRESSIVE AGENCY OF THE CROSS-DRESSING SOLDIER

    2020. Renata Ingbrant. Engendering Transnational Transgressions, 49-65

    Chapter

    The chapter deals with the history of a woman soldier, a participant of the Polish national insurrection of 1863, Anna Henryka Pustowójtówna (1838–1881). Among the pictographic and historiographical representations of women involved in the combat, the image of Pustowójtówna in a man’s uniform stands out as most iconic, although her legacy today is undecided. The chapter discusses the transgressive agency of the figure of a cross-dressing soldier as well as the emancipatory idea of a citizen-soldier versus the normalizing power of literary convention. It also reflects on the specific position of women heroes in Polish collective in an attempt to understand why Pustowójtówna has been absent from women’s history and feminist discourse of today.

    Read more about THE TRANSGRESSIVE AGENCY OF THE CROSS-DRESSING SOLDIER

  • Michalina Wisłocka’s The Art of Loving and the Legacy of Polish Sexology

    2020. Renata Ingbrant. Sexuality & Culture

    Article

    This article discusses the development of Polish sexology as well as the challenges of sex education in Poland in general and the implications of Michalina Wisłocka’s work within the field of adult sex education in particular, both from a historical perspective and against the background of sociopolitical circumstances and the backlash in the sexual politics of today’s Poland. Michalina Wisłocka (1921–2005) is the author of Sztuka kochania [The Art of Loving] from 1978—the most widely read Polish handbook on sex, sexuality and eroticism. Although there has not been a sexual revolution in Poland, the success of the book may be considered revolutionary as it had an enormous impact on sexual awareness among the Poles at least for two decades after its publication. Nowadays, the book is considered groundbreaking as regards its normalizing effect on the language of sex, despite the omnipresence of gender role stereotypes. Even so, the revival of Wisłocka that has been seen in Poland in recent years is quite remarkable because the book appears traditional and largely outdated from today’s perspective. In the context of the postsocialist retraditionalization of sexual politics in Poland, however, the revived interest in Wisłocka seems less ambiguous since it can be perceived both as a sign of backlash and a sign of renewed demand for sexual knowledge and education.

    Read more about Michalina Wisłocka’s The Art of Loving and the Legacy of Polish Sexology

  • Kobiecy antyświat w poezji Anny Świrszczyńskiej

    2018. Renata Ingbrant. Formy (nie)obecnośc, 261-270

    Chapter

    In Świrszczynska's poems, the perception of the world from an ostentatiously feminine perspective aims at a radical revision of femininity in literature. Świrsczyńska introduces inte her poetry the "outlawed feminine" and, as a result, revolutionises the language of poetry and poetic representation and, as a result her poems become the quintessence of female experience. The re-evaluation of this experience makes her one of the most radical feminist voices in the Polish poetry.

    Read more about Kobiecy antyświat w poezji Anny Świrszczyńskiej

  • In Search of the New Man

    2014. Renata Ingbrant. The Polish Review 59 (1), 35-52

    Article

    This article is a part of an ongoing study, the purpose of which is to map masculinities under transformation in late nineteenth-century Polish prose, and particularly in the works of Henryk Sienkiewicz, Bolesław Prus, Stefan Żeromski, and Wacław Berent. Drawing on developments taking place in society at that time, the article explores the new types of literary heroes that appear in Polish literature toward the end of the nineteenth century: the decadent antihero, the aristocrat Leon Płoszowski as well as “newcomers” to the capitalist society, the “New Men,” Stanisław Wokulski, Tomasz Judym, and Kazimierz Zaliwski. The article argues that, even though the new models of masculinity that the protagonists represent pose a certain challenge to the prevailing romantic models, the characters remain entrapped in literary conventions that inscribe specific gender roles on literary heroes.

    Read more about In Search of the New Man

  • From Her Point of View

    2007. Renata Ingbrant (et al.).

    Thesis (Doc)

    This book is a monograph about Anna Świrszczyńska’s poetry. It may be described as one woman’s attempt to read another woman’s literary work by taking into account established canons as well as the tools of feminist literary analysis. Part One begins with a discussion of Świrszczyńska’s biography (Chapter One). It then moves on to an overview of critical (mainly male) reactions to Świrszczyńska’s work (Chapter Two), with special regard to Czesław Miłosz’s contribution to its interpretation and popularization (Chapter Three). In Part Two there are three principal discussions: 1) of Anna Świrszczyńska’s early work Wiersze i proza [Poems and Prose] (1936), in which the poet develops her specific female view of European art and culture as disintegrated into incongruent fragments. Her premonition of the apocalypse, which is soon to be fulfilled in the events of World War II, finds its expression in the poet’s desperate attempts to unite the fragments of a shattered culture into individualized versions of myths (Chapter Four); 2) of the collection Budowałam barykadę [Building the Barricade] (1974), in which what is most crucial to the poet (biographically and poetically) is expressed – the encounter with human suffering in an inhuman world. Following this, her poetic view of the mortal body exposed to suffering under an empty sky becomes a well established motif in her work (Chapter Five); 3) of the collection Jestem baba (1972), in which Świrszczyńska introduces into poetry, by making the non-poetical “baba” her lyric heroine, the “outlawed feminine” and, as a result, revolutionizes the language of poetry and poetic representation, which leads in turn to liberating herself from the hegemony of the totalizing male gaze. In this way her anti-world is created (Chapter Six). The “world” is understood here as a male term – one might say that Świrszczyńska creates a “woman’s anti-world” as a place where the woman herself has to regain the right to name things according to her own terms.

    Read more about From Her Point of View

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