DĄBROWSKI Mieczysław

Born 16 May 1947,[1] although 28 September appears in the incorrect registry entry, in the village of Topiąca (Mazovian voivodeship); son of the farmers Roman Dąbrowski and Władysława Dąbrowska, née Głowacka. He attended the Władysław Jagiełło Grammar School in Płock from 1961. He completed advanced secondary education in 1965 and started a degree in Polish philology at the University of Warsaw (UW). He made his debut in 1970 with the article Świat metaforą opisany. O prozie Tadeusza Nowaka (A World of Metaphors: Tadeusz Nowak's prose), which was published in the biweekly "Współczesność" (no. 11). He was awarded a master's degree the same year and was appointed to a post at the Faculty of Polish Studies at the University of Warsaw. His research focused on the history of twentieth-century Polish literature and comparative literature. Later in his career he was particularly interested in modernism, postmodernism and ethical critique, as well as questions of cultural identity. Between 1970 and 1981 he was a member of the ruling communist party (the Polish United Workers' Party – PZPR) and the Polish Teachers' Association (ZNP). In 1975, he was awarded a doctoral degree from UW after defending his thesis, Stanisław Piętak. Studium historycznoliterackie (Stanisław Piętak: A literary historical study), which was supervised by Dr Janusz Rohoziński. His articles, studies and reviews appeared in numerous publications, including "Tygodnik Kulturalny" (1979—80, 1985-87, including a series of literary articles published in 1985/86 titled Orzeł i reszka literatury współczesnej [The heads and tails of contemporary literature]), "Nowe Książki" (1979-81), "Miesięcznik Literacki" (1978-88) and "Przegląd Humanistyczny" (1979-81, 1990-98). On several occasions he was a guest lecturer in Polish language and culture at foreign universities: 1975-77 at Göttingen, 1987-89 at the Coal Mining Management College in Beijing, and 1990-94 at the Institute of Slavonic Studies at Tübingen. In 1988, he was awarded a habilitation degree for his study „Nierzeczywista rzeczywistość". Twórczość Andrzeja Kuśniewicza na tle epoki ("Unreal Reality. The work of Andrzej Kuśniewicz in its historical context). Between 1995 and 2003 he was a member of the Polish Writers' Union (ZLP). He organized (or co-organized) and participated in many national and international conferences and symposia, including events held at universities in Vienna, Berlin, Saarbrücken, Passau, Trier, Greifswald, Bonn, Brussels, Leuven, Bucharest, Sofia, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Piliscabie, Naples, Prague, Brno, Debrecen, Minsk, Drohobych and Lviv. Between 1993 and 1995, he held a research grant from the Central European University, while in 1997/98 he received a teaching grant from the Open Society Institute in Budapest. During the winter semester of 1996/97 and the summer semester of 1999/2000 he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Slavonic Studies in Heidelberg where he taught on Western Slavonic literature. In 1997, he was appointed associate professor at UW, joining the Academic Council of the Institute of Polish Literature the same year. Between 1999 and 2002, he served on the University Senate's Disciplinary Referral Committee for Students (Odwoławcza Komisja Dyscyplinarna dla Studentów), while from 2002 to 2005 he was a member of the Extra-Faculty Assessment Commission for Academic Teachers (Komisja Oceniająca Nauczycieli Akademickich poza Wydziałami). From 2001 to 2006, he was director of the Department of Twentieth-Century Literature at the Institute of Polish Literature at UW. In 2002 he was made a state-appointed professor, Between 2002 and 2005, he was head of the doctoral Commission for Literary Studies at the Faculty of Polish Studies, serving again in this role between 2005 and 2012. Between 2002 and 2005, he was head of the Academic Council at the National Centre of Polish Language and Culture for Foreigners (Polonicum) at UW. He taught on several occasions on summer and winter courses at Polonicum, while also working as a lecturer on the Socrates/Erasmus programmes. In 2002, he co-organized (with Prof. Andrzej Makowiecki) the international conference Modernistyczne źródła dwudziestowieczności (The Modernist Origins of the Twentieth-Century Condition), while in 2003 he co-organized the conference Dwudziestowieczność (The Twentieth Century Condition) with Dr Tomasz Wójcik. In 2003, he was appointed head of the Research Centre for Minority Literary Cultures (Pracownia Badań Literackiej Kultury Mniejszości) at the Institute of Polish Studies at UW where he taught and published on the Polish-German-Jewish cultural borderlands. From 2003 to 2006, he was co-director, alongside Prof. Haliną Janaszek-Ivanićkova, of the International Research Network that coordinated the project Literatury słowiańskie po 1989 roku w dialogu z Europą a światem. Nowe zjawiska, tendencje, perspektywy (Slavonic Literatures after 1989 in Dialogue with Europe and the World: New phenomena, tendencies and perspectives). Sessions were held in Bautzen in 2003 and Piliscabie, Hungary, in 2004. In collaboration with the Drohobych Pedagogical University in Ukraine, he organized the conference Drohobycz-miasto wielu kultur (Drohobych: A Multicultural City) in 2004. Between 2005 and 2012, he was director of the Institute of Polish Studies at UW. He initiated the Department of Comparative Literature in 2007 in cooperation with Prof. Edward Kasperski and Dr Ewa Szczęsna. He was a member of the Department and continued to serve as a professor emeritus from 2018. In 2005, he spent a month at the University of Trier on a DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst/ German Academic Exchange Service) fellowship. He periodically worked with Polish Radio and Polish Television, appearing, for example, on the quiz show Wielka Gra, while also appearing on programmes broadcast on TVP Kultura in later years. Between 2004 and 2011, he was a member of the Programme Council of the journal "Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki", while from 2008 to 2013 he served on the editorial board of "Prace Filologiczne. Seria Literaturoznawcza" (the literary studies series of the journal). In 2009, he joined the Editorial Committee of the Romanian journal "Romanoslavica". In 2007, he was made a full professor of UW. The same year, he co-founded the International Association of Polish Studies (Międzynarodowe Stowarzyszenie Studiów Polonistycznych) and was appointed to the Honorary Committee of the online literary portal Wspólne lektury. He spent the 2012/13 winter semester as a visiting professor at the Slavonic Studies seminar in Tübingen. He is a member of many academic societies and associations, including Societas Jablonoviana (since 2002), the Commission for Comparative Literature at the International Committe for Slavic Studies (Komisja Literatury Porównawczej Międzynarodowego Komitetu Slawistów – since 2003), and the Polish Comparative Literature Society (Polskie Stowarzyszenie Komparatystyki Literackiej – since 2013). He has been awarded the individual prize of the Minister of Science and Higher Education (in 1978, 1983, and 2006). She lives in Warsaw.