BAKUŁA Bogusław

Born on 25 March 1954 in Warsaw into a family of Polish studies graduates and teachers; son of the poet and literary critic Leszek Bakuła and Krystyna, née Markowska. In 1958 he moved with his parents to Ustka where he attended the Copernicus Grammar School from 1969, completing his advanced secondary education in 1973. The same year he started a degree in Polish philology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Uniwersytet im. A. Mickiewicza w Poznaniu – UAM). He was awarded a master's degree in 1977, with a minor in theatre studies. During his studies he was involved in the anti-communist opposition, distributing underground publications and flyers. Between 1978 and 1980 he was a doctoral researcher at the faculty of history at UAM. During this period he was a vehicle mechanic at the municipal transport company in Słupsk (to 1981) before becoming a teacher of Polish language at a primary school in Poznan while also working in the cultural section of the Poznan branch of Polish Television (1981). He made his debut as a literary scholar in 1979 with the article Autotematyzm we współczesnej kulturze artystycznej (Self-referentiality in contemporary artistic culture), which was published in "Tygodnik Kulturalny" (no. 13). His academic research focused on twentieth-century Polish literature and comparative studies of Central and East European literatures. His reviews and articles appeared in publications including "Integracje" (1980 and 1983), "Studia Polonistyczne" (1985 and 1991), "Ruch Literackim" (1986) and "Akcent" (1987/88). From 1980 he was a member of the Independent Self-governing Trade Union Solidarity (NSZZ "Solidarność"), while from November 1981 he was a member of the trade union's workplace committee at UAM. From 1981 he was employed as an assistant lecturer at the Department of Literary Theory at the Institute of Polish Philology at UAM (Zakład Teorii Literatury Instytutu Filologii Polskiej UAM). In January 1982 he founded the underground Poznań-based publication "Obserwator Wielkopolski", serving on its editorial team until 1989. He also published opinion essays, reviews and translations from Ukrainian here between 1982 and 1990 (signing his contributions under pen-names including: A-tomek, (A.W.), AW, (a.w.), A. Wild., (A. Wild.), Adam Wildecki, BB, Jerzy Wipman, MÓL, Przemysław Poznański, red. dyżurny, Wildecki, Wipman, WAW and (k.a.w.)). In 1982 he served as editor and presenter on the first broadcasts made by the underground Radio Solidarność in the Greater Poland region. Between 1985 and 1988 he lived in Puszczykowo near Poznan, where he established the underground print works serving "Obserwator Wielkopolski" and other publications including the literary journal "Bez Debitu". He spent two months in 1987 on a placement in France, where he learned printing techniques and was taught how to use printing equipment. In 1989, he was awarded a doctoral degree for his dissertation Oblicza autotematyzmu w polskiej prozie powieściowej po roku 1956 (Self-referentiality in Polish novels after 1956). It was supervised by Prof. Edward Balcerzan. He was made lecturer at the Department of Literary Theory at the Institute of Polish Philology at UAM. He published essays and opinion pieces on the politics and culture on Central and Eastern Europe in the Paris-based periodicals "Kontakt" (from 1988) and "Kultura" (between 1990 and 1996 – including in 1992/93 the regular column Z prasy ukraińskiej, which offered a digest of the Ukrainian press). He also wrote for the London-based "Orzeł Biały" between 1990 and 2001. His articles, short pieces, reviews and translations from Ukrainian also appeared in publications including "Czas Kultury" (1989,1990 and 2003), "Arkusz" (1991-93 and 1995-97), "Biuletyn Polonistyczny" (1991), "Kultura Niezależna" (1991), "Teksty Drugie" (1994 and 2006), "Życie i Myśl" (1994), "Kresy" (1996) and "Polonistyka" (1996, 2001 and 2007). In 1994 and 1998 he served as co-organizer of the international cultural congresses Kultura czasu przełomu (Culture of the time of transformation) that took place in Poznań. Bakuła has also been co-initiator of various academic Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Czech projects. In 1995, he was a visiting fellow at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv and at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv. In 1996, he was a fellow at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and in 1997 at the Masaryk University in Brno, while in 1999 he was a guest researcher at the Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University. Between 1994 and 1996, he held a grant from the Central European University in Budapest as part of the Research Support Scheme, which enabled him to write a study of Ukrainian poetry. The resulting work was published in 1999 as Skrzydło Dedala (Daedalus' wing). He has also collaborated with the Kyiv Slavonic University, the Charles University in Prague, the Palacký University in Olomouc and the Silesian University in Opava. He organized numerous Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Czech academic conferences, while later also initiating Polish-Hungarian events. In 1995, he was awarded a habilitation by UAM for his study Człowiek jako dzieło sztuki Z problemów metarefleksji artystycznej (The Human Being as a Work of Art: On artistic metareflection). In 1996 he was made professor at the Institute of Polish Philology at UAM. Between 1995 and 1998 he served on the editorial board of the cultural periodical "Arkusz". In 1998, he became director of the Centre for Comparative Literature (Pracownia Komparatystyki Literackiej), which is now the Department for Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies (Zakład Komparatystyki Literackiej i Kulturowej) at the Institute of Polish Philology at UAM. In 2000 he was made state-appointed professor. The same year, he was a fellow of the Polish Ministry of National Education at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. From 2000 he was co-editor, and from 2013 editor-in-chief, of the yearbook "Slavia Occidentalis", published by The Poznań Society for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences (Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk – PTPN) where he also published articles, essays and translations from Czech and Slovakian (2000, 2002-04, 2006-07, 2009 and 2011). He became a member of the Society in 2002. Between 2000 and 2005, he also worked at Wyższa Szkoła Nauk Humanistycznych i Dziennikarstwa (the Higher School of Humanities and Journalism, now Collegium Da Vinci), a private university in Poznan. In 2003, he received an honorary doctorate from the Kyiv Slavonic University. In 2004 he founded the interdisciplinary, comparative literature journal "Porównania" and served as its editor-in-chief. He also published numerous articles in this periodical, as well as translations from Ukrainian, Hungarian and Czech (2004 to 2009, 2011 and 2014). Between 2005 and 2008 he was rector of Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa "Kadry dla Europy" (European Career School), a private university in Poznań. Between 2006 and 2009, he was involved in the international research project Das Andere Osteuropa – die 1960er bis 1980er Jahre. Dissens in Politik und Gesellschaft, Alternativen in der Kultur. Beiträge zu einer vergleichenden Zeitgeschichte (The other Eastern Europe: Dissent in politics and society, cultural alternatives), which was based at The Research Centre for East European Studies (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa – FSO), an institution affiliated to the University of Bremen. Bakuła was also the head of the research team working on the project Polskie dziedzictwo kulturowe w nowej Europie. Transformacja w kulturze i literaturze polskiej 1989-2004 na tle przemian w kulturze Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, (Polish cultural heritage in the new Europe: Transformations of Polish literature and culture between 1989 and 2004 in the context of cultural change in Central and Eastern Europe), which was conducted at the Institute of Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN). He continued his work as a researcher and literary critic, publishing in "Twórczość" (2005), "Odra" (2007) and "Akcent" (2012-13), as well as in foreign journals, including "Revue des Études Slaves" (Paris; 1991), "Slovo ì čas" (Kyiv; 1997 and 2002), "Dyvoslovo" (Kyiv; 2000), "Kritika" (Kyiv; 2000, 2003 and 2010), "Sučasnist’" (Kyiv; 2002), "Arhè" (Minsk; 2003), "Osteuropa" (Berlin; 2004-05 and 2009), „OS” (Bratislava; 2009), "Česká Literatura" (Prague; 2010) and "Host" (Brno; 2010). In 2007 he co-founded Polsko-Czeskie Towarzystwo Naukowe (Polish-Czech Scientific Society) in Wrocław, becoming a member of its board. In 2009, he was appointed full professor at UAM in Poznań. The same year he established a new degree programme in philological-historical Central European studies at UAM as a cooperation between the Department of Polish and Classical Philology and the History Department at the university. Since 2007 he has collaborated with Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia, while in 2010 he established a cooperation with the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Piliscsaba, Hungary. In collaboration with these universities, Bakuła conducted the international research project Dyskurs postkolonialny w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej 1991-2011: Polska, Węgry, Słowacja, Ukraina. Literatura, eseistyka, stan badań (Postcolonial discourse in Central and Eastern Europe, 1991-2011: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine), which was sponsored by Poland's National Humanities Development Program (Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki). He was made "Meritorious Activist of Culture" in 2001, receiving the honour for his activities in underground (second circulation) publishing between 1981 and 1989. He lives in Poznan.