ANDRES Zbigniew

Born on 12 December 1934 in Kurzyna Mała (Nisko district); son of Józef Andres and Zofia, née Chmiel. During the German occupation and the first postwar years, he attended the primary school in Kurzyna Średnia before going on the grammar school in Ulanów, where he completed advanced secondary education in 1952. He then started working as an administrative employee at Stalowa Wola power station, before transferring to the steel mill in the town in January 1953. In October 1953 he started a degree in Polish studies at the Catholic University of Lublin but an accident forced him to abandon his studies. From February to June 1954 he was a student of the State Teachers' Course (Państwowy Kurs Nauczycielski) in Przemyśl, graduating from the programme with a diploma as a qualified primary school teacher. During the 1954/55 school year he worked as a teacher in the State Youth Education Institute (Państwowy Młodzieżowy Zakład Wychowawczy) in Wzdów near Brzozów before finding employment in primary schools in Rakszawa (1955-57) and Giedlarowa near Leżajsk (1957-60). He continued his education in parallel, taking a part-time teacher training degree (Zaoczne Studium Nauczycielskie) in Rzeszów, which he completed in 1958. Between 1960 and 1968 he was head of the primary school in Wólka Niedźwiedzka (Leżajsk district). During this period he was also director of the District Pedagogical Centre at the Leżajsk Educational Department. In 1962 he married the maths teacher Maria Surowiec. In 1963 he was given a place on a degree course for full-time employees at the Pedagogical University of Kraków (WSP – Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna). He completed a master's degree in Polish philology at the Pedagogical University of Rzeszów (WSP) in 1968. During this period he and his family moved to Leżajsk, where he worked as a Polish teacher at the grammar school between 1968 and 1975. He was also deputy director there from 1972 to 1976. He made his debut in 1971 with the short sketch Rzeszowska "Naprawa". (O działalności wydawniczej Wiejskiego Uniwersytetu Orkanowego) ("Naprawa" in Rzeszów: On the publishing activities of the Orkanowy Rural University, a community college for adult education) that appeared in the monthly periodical "Profile" (no. 9). He published numerous articles and literary reviews in the same publication in 1973, 1977-81 and 1988. In 1972 he received the prize of the Minister of Education, 3rd class. He was awarded a doctoral degree by the Jagiellonian University (UJ) in 1975 for his dissertation Walka o prawdziwy obraz wsi w prozie polskiej lat 1930-1939 (The struggle for an authentic image of villages in Polish prose between 1930 and 1939), which was supervised by Prof. Marian Stępień. The same year he was appointed lecturer at the Department of Polish Literature and Language at the Pedagogical University of Rzeszów (prior to this appointment, he worked at the institution as a teaching assistant for two years). His articles and essays on contemporary literature and authors that formed the "peasant strand" (nurt chłopski) of Polish literature, and then later on émigré literature, appeared in the literary-historical yearbook of the Krakow branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences "Rocznik Komisji Historycznoliterackiej PAN Oddział w Krakowie" (intermittently between 1973 and 1983, and again in 1998), as well as in "Rocznik Naukowo-Dydaktyczny WSP w Rzeszowie” (from 1976), "Ruch Literacki” (intermittently between 1977 and 2005), "Prace Humanistyczne Towarzystwa Naukowego w Rzeszowie" (from 1979), "Życie Literackie" (1975 and 1981-82), "Literatura" (1978), "Poezja" (1983 to 1989) and "Tygodnik Kulturalny" (1984 to 1986). In 1975 he became a member of the learned society Towarzystwo Naukowe in Rzeszów, serving as the head of its Literary History Commission from 1978 to 1990. From 1977 to 1985 he was the director of the Centre for Twentieth-Century Polish Literature and Literary Theory. The Department was initially part of the Chair of Polish Literature and Language at the Pedagogical University of Rzeszów (WSP) before its incorporation into the Institute of Polish Philology in the Faculty of the Humanities at Rzeszów WSP. In 1978, he was awarded the prize of the Minister of Science and Higher Education, 3rd class in 1983 and again in 1986. In 1981 he became a member of the Historical Commission of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) in Krakow. He was editor of journals in the Filologia Polska (Polish Philology) series, namely "Rocznik Naukowo-Dydaktyczny WSP w Rzeszowie" (1981 and 1990) and "Prace Humanistyczne Towarzystwa Naukowego w Rzeszowie" (1982). In 1985, he was awarded a habilitation by the Faculty of Humanities of the Pedagogical University of Kraków (WSP) for his study Faktografia i mity. Proza pisarzy o rodowodzie chłopskim lat 1918-1939 (Facts and myths. Prose-writers of peasant origins between 1918 and 1939). In 1986 he was appointed senior lecturer at the Pedagogical University of Rzeszów. In the 1986/87 academic year he served as associate dean at the Faculty of the Humanities, while from 1987 to 1990 he was prorector for studies at Rzeszów WSP. In 1990 he was appointed professor of the Pedagogical University of Rzeszów. In 1995 he became director of the Department for Twentieth-Century Polish Literature, while in 1999 he was made director of the Institute of Polish Philology at the Pedagogical University of Rzeszów. He was made state-appointed professor in 1999, before being made full professor in 2000. He published articles and literary reviews in periodicals and journals including "Fraza" (1995 to 2005 and 2011), "Wiadomości Małopolskie" (1997-98), "Regiony" (1998), "Twórczość Ludowa” (1998), "Literatura" (1997-2000), "Tyczyńskie Zeszyty Naukowe” (2001-02), "Kwartalnik Edukacyjny" (2008 and 2011) and in "Myśl Polska" (2018). With the creation of Rzeszów University in 2001 (replacing the Pedagogical University of Rzeszów), he served as director of the Institute of Polish Philology until 2005 and, in parallel, as director head of the Centre for Twentieth-Century Polish Literature until 2006. After his formal retirement in 2004 he continued to teach undergraduate seminars until 2012. In addition to this, he also lectured in Polish literature at the Faculty of Sociology and Political Science at the private higher education institution Wyższa Szkoła Społeczno-Gospodarcza (Higher School of Social Science and Economics) in Tyczyn. In 2006 he received the prize of the city of Rzeszów. He was a member of the Editorial Board of Słownik biograficzny twórców oświaty i kultury XIX i XX wieku Polski Południowo-Wschodniej (The biographical dictionary of the creators of culture and education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Southeastern Poland; Rzeszów 2011), while also contributing over 45 biographical entries to the work. He was also the author of over 60 entries to Encyklopedia Rzeszowa (1st edition 2011, 2nd edition 2012), covering both biographies and details of cultural and literary life in the Rzeszów region. He is a member of the academic advisory board of the journal "Kwartalnik Edukacyjny". He was made a Meritorious Activist of Culture in 1980) and received the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1987, followed by the Officer's Cross in 2004. In 2000 he was awarded the Medal of the Commission of National Education (Komisja Edukacji Narodowej) in 2000. He lives in Rzeszów.