PŁUCIENNIK Jarosław

Born on 3 December 1966 in Ostrów Wielkopolski; son of the welder Zbigniew Płuciennik, and the nurse Anna. Between 1981 and 1986, he was a pupil at the Hanna Chrzanowska Medical Grammar School in Ostrów Wielkopolski. After qualifying as a nurse he studied Polish philology on an individual programme at the University of Lodz (UŁ), where he also took classes in cultural anthropology. He was a member of the Students' Union, the Independent Students’ Association (NZS), and was also manager, director and actor at the student theatre group Trupa Fajt from 1989 to 1991. After graduating with a master's degree in Polish philology in 1991, he was employed as an assistant at the Department of Literary Theory at the Chair of Literary Theory, Theatre and Film (from 2002 the Chair of Literary Theory at the Institute of Literary Theory, Theatre and Audiovisual Arts, which in 2006 became the Institute of Contemporary Culture) at UŁ. He made his debut in 1992 with the article Tekst i tekst. O niektórych związkach intertekstualnych „Hymnu na dzień Zwiastowania N.P. Maryi” Adama Mickiewicza (Text and text: Aspects of intertextual relations in Adam Miczkiewicz's "Hymn for the Day of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Virgin"), which appeared in the conference volume Biblia a kultura Europy = La Bible à la culture de l’Europe (The Bible and European Culture). From 1992 to 1994, he served as mentor to university's Polish studies circle and to the journal of UŁ cultural studies students. His research in literary theory largely focused on the concept of the sublime, comparative literature, and on cognitive science in the broad sense. Between 1994 and 1996, he was twice a visiting fellow in Lund, Sweden. During his first six-month stay he completed the Individual Curriculum in Cognitive Semantics organized at the Department of Philosophy at Lund University Cognitive Science division. During a second, year-long stay he completed a course in Swedish for Advanced Students, which was hosted by the Department of Scandinavian Languages. In June 1999, he defended his doctoral thesis at UŁ, Retoryka wzniosłości w dziele literackim (The Rhetoric of the Sublime in Literary Works), which was supervised by Prof. Teresa Cieślikowska. Several months later he was appointed lecturer. He participated on three occasions in courses organized by the Istituto Mitteleuropeo di Cultura in Bolzano as part of the International School in Cognitive Analysis: Advances in Cognitive Semantics (1999), Dependence and Dynamic Categories (2000) and Hierarchies of Representation (2001). Between 1999 and 2000, he was a member of the US-based Society for Critical Exchange. In late June and early July 2000 he participated in the Course Design Workshop at the Central European University in Budapest, then worked on a project funded by the CEU until 2001. During this period he taught seminars and gave lectures in poetics, literary theory and comparative literature in the Polish philology and cultural studies programmes at UŁ. He also gave courses in English for Erasmus students as part of the module Poland: History, Culture and Society. (Short History of the Sublime in the Polish Lyric). In 2001, he joined the Polish Association of Cognitive Linguistics, the UK-based Poetics and Linguistics Association, and the US-based Centre for Rhetorics and Hermeneutics. From 2001 to 2003, he ran workshops on rhetorics as part of the postgraduate programme in journalism at the Faculty of American Studies and Social Communication at UŁ. The following semester he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Warsaw (UW), where he taught on cognitive poetics. In 2002, he became a member of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, as well as the UK-based International Association of Literary Semantics and Society for Reformation Studies. In November 2003, he was awarded a habilitation degree from UŁ for his study Literackie identyfikacje i oddźwięki. Poetyka a empatia (Literary Identifications and Resonances: Poetics and empathy). From September to December 2004, he was a visiting fellow at Westminster College in Cambridge, England. That year he joined the British Comparative Literature Association and the US-based International Comparative Literature Association. In 2004, he was awarded the Prize of the Praesidium of the Lodz Branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences and of the Conference of Rectors of State Universities in Lodz in recognition of his lifetime achievement in the field of humanities. Between 2004 and 2006, he was assistant to the Dean of the Faculty of Philology and responsible for internationalization of research and teaching. He became a member of the Lodz Scientific Society (ŁTN) in 2006 and was was made associate professor at UŁ the same year. Beyond his lecture courses and teaching in logic, semiotics and historical poetics, he also gave seminars for master's students in Polish philology and cultural studies and for doctoral students at the Faculty of Philology at UŁ. He also taught two courses in English for Erasmus students: Theory of Narrative Writing and Literary Culture of [the] 20th century. In 2007, he was appointed to the editorial board of the yearbook "Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich", where he became editor-in-chief in 2010. From 2007 he led the research team Podmiotowość, teoria, literatura (Subjectivity, Theory, Literature). From October 2008 to March 2009 he took a sabbatical and was a visiting fellow at Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge. Following his return and until 2012 he was director of the Doctoral Studies Programme in Language, Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Philology at UŁ. That year he was made state appointed professor and full professor at UŁ. In October 2009, he was a visiting lecturer at Lund University Cognitive Science division in Sweden. From 2012 to 2016, he was Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and Education at UŁ. He travelled abroad on numerous occasions for research trips, consultations and to participate in conferences, visiting, among others, Slovakia in 1993, the Netherlands in 1997 and 2002, India in 2000, the USA in 2000, Canada in 2000, Hungary in 2001, Sweden in 2001/02 and 2009, and the UK several times between 2001 and 2008. He was also a visiting lecturer at Seton Hall University, NJ, in 2013. Between 2014 and 2016, he held the Chair of Literary Theory at the Institute of Contemporary Culture at UŁ. In 2015, he became chair of the Lodz Branch of the Commission on Culture and Arts of the Polish Academy of Sciences. That year he was also a reviewer on the committee that awarded an honorary doctorate from UŁ to Umberto Eco. In 2015/16 he was a member of the Board of the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities. In 2016, he was head of the project Uniwersytet Otwarty UŁ (Open University UŁ) before becoming assistant to the Rector on open educational resources. In 1999 he joined the Polish Evangelical Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Ewangelickie), while from 2012 to 2016 he was a secular member of the synod of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland. In 2016, he became involved in the Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD), becoming its spokesperson in Lodz and a member of the Regional Board. Since 2016 he has written a blog, Nespresso Nowiny, for the Liberté! portal (http://pluciennik.liberte.pl). In 2001, he married the literary historian Magdalena Rembowska. They have two sons: Szymon (b. 2004) and Mateusz (b. 2010). He lives in Lodz.