CEFRES Team

Olga Słowik: Research & CV

Food, Gender, Identity, and their Entanglements in Contemporary Czech Prose

Research Area 2 – Norms & Transgressions

Contact: olga.slowik@cefres.cz (from 1st September 2018)

My Ph.D. project explores ways in which food motifs intervene in the broad problem of searching for or attempts to construct a personal identity of female characters (and narrators) in contemporary Czech prose.

The departure point of my research is the recognition of the crucial role that food has traditionally played in women’s lives and of its ambiguous entanglements in the late twentieth and early twenty-first  century reality of the Central (and Western) Europe. Although the most direct consequences are widely known and presented also in literature (e.g. in young adult novels and autobiographies that directly cover the theme of eating disorders) it seems that food motifs have often been neglected/overlooked in analyses of literary texts unless they are central motifs. I claim that even in those cases paying attention to them can enrich our interpretation, especially when we deal with texts that evolve around “identity troubles,” on which I focus in the main interpretative part of my dissertation where I examine texts by Alexandra Berková, Zuzana Brabcová, Jakuba Katalpa, and Anna Bolavá.

CV

Education

2015—: Doctoral Studies in History of Czech Literature and Literary Theory; Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Czech and Comparative Literature

2011-2014: Master of Arts in Czech Language and Literature; Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Czech and Comparative Literature

2008-2011: B.A. in Slavic Studies, specialization: Czech studies; Philological Faculty, Jagiellonian University, Cracow

Exchange Programs

  • 2016–2017: Faculty of Polish Studies, Warsaw University, Poland
  • 2012–2013: Faculty of Humanities, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  • 2010–2011: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Awards and Honors

  • Vladimír Macura Award, 2017, granted by the Czech Literature Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, for the paper Žena stereotypní, žena “experimentální“? Prolegomena k ženským postavám v díle Alexandry Berkové

Work Experience

2017–2018: Interpreter and Assistant of Director, Divadlo pod Palmovkou, Prague

2017: Teaching Assistant, Department of Czech Literature and Comparative Literature, Charles University, Course: What is a Woman? Interpreting Lyrics through a Feminist Lens

2015–2017: Editor of Czech Literature Website CzechLit.cz

2015—: Freelance Journalist, Cooperation with Gender Studies o.p.s., A2larm.cz, Demokratický střed, Krytyka Polityczna

2014—: Freelance Translator, Translating academic and journalistic articles, poetry, subtitles, Cooperation with, e.g., the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University, Slovo a smysl, Tekstualia, Krytyka Polityczna, Czech Centre Warsaw, New Eastern Europe, Rita Baum

2014—: Polish Language Teacher

Selected Publications

  • Antropologie a literatura. Pár poznámek k inspiracím z Polska. Slavica Iuvenum XVIII. Ostravská univerzita, Filozofická fakulta, 2017, p. 234-246
  • Ukážu ti lásku v hrsti hvězd. Julia Fiedorczuk a ekopoetika. A2, 19/2017, p. 4
  • (with Libuše Heczková) Tschechische Nachfolgerinnen Bertha von Suttners. Suttner im KonText: Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Werk und Leben der Friedensnobelpreisträgerin (Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter GmbH, 2017, p. 171-184
  • Selected Talks and Conference Papers
  • Žena stereotypní, žena „experimentální“? Prolegomena k ženským postavám v díle Alexandry Berkové (The Stereotypical Woman, The ‘Experimental’ Woman? Prolegomena on the Female Characters in the Works by Alexandra Berková). Student Literary Conference of the Czech Academy of Sciences, 2017
  • Czy glebę się je? O cielesności w powieści Jakuby Katalpy (Is Soil for Eating? Sensuality in Jakuba Katalpa’s Novel). Paper presented at the Conference Sensuality in Literature, Language and Culture, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland, 2016
  • Jadłowstręt psychiczny w interpretacjach feministycznych lat 80. i 90. XX wieku (Anorexia nervosa in feminist interpretations of the 1980s and 1990s). Paper presented at the conference Appetite for food. Food in society, culture and symbols throughout history, Kazimierz Wielki University, Bydgoszcz, Poland, 2016

Languages

Polish (Native), Czech (Native-like Competence), English (Academic Level), German (Good Knowledge), French (Beginner)