Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga has degrees in English Studies from Maria Curie-Skłodowska University and in Culture and Criticism from the University of London. She works at the intersection of literary and cultural studies.  Her main research interests are semiotics of space, twentieth-century and contemporary British literature and culture, manorial tradition from the 19th century onwards, urban representations and dystopia in literature, film and culture. She is the founder of the Research Group on the Semiotics of Space and a co-organizer of the conference Signifying Spaces.  

Awards and grants

She is a grant researcher in The National Programme for the Development of the Humanities "The Canon of World Utopian Literature in Polish Translation" (ID 457841 nr rej. 22H 20 0049 88; grant holder: prof. Artur Blaim)

In 2022, she won a grant in the OPUS 23 series organized by the National Science Centre for a three-year research project entitled "Social Media in Contemporary Literary Dystopia"  (ID 562236 2022/45/B/HS2/02693). 

2024 - University Chancellor's award for high-impact journal publication

2020 - University Chancellor's award for high-impact journal publication

2018 - University Chancellor's award for high-impact journal publication

Degrees:

Professor UMCS 2019

Habilitation 2016

PhD, 2004 UMCS

MA Culture and Criticism, University of London

MA English Literature, UMCS

BOOKS:

Space in Literature: Method, Genre, Topos. (ed.) Peter Lang, 2018.

Dreams, Nightmares and Empty Signifiers: The English Country House in the Contemporary Novel. Peter Lang, 2015.

Semiotyka przestrzeni kobiecych w powieściach Virginii Woolf. (The Semiotics of Women Space in Virginia Woolf's Novels). UMCS: Lublin 2006.

Know More. A Resource Book on British Culture, Espero: Kraków 1996.

SELECTED ARTICLES:

"Do it Yourself Dystopia: The Digital Future in Dave Eggers’s The Every." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 5 Feb 2024. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00111619.2024.2311740

"Negotiating the Nightmares in the Digital Age: Dave Eggers's The Circle as a Dialogue with Classical Dystopia. Opalescent Worlds: Studies in Utopia. Festschrift in Honour of Artur Blaim, ed. Justyna Kowalczyk i Andrzej Sławomir Kowalczyk (UMCS,  2021): 235-24.

“The logic of “both/and” in The Matrix: Eutopian mapping in a posthuman world” Roczniki Humanistyczne LXVI/2018: 101-111. 

„Defining the Dystopian Chronotope: Space, Time and Genre in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four” Beyond Philology 15.3 (2018): 9-39.

„Literary Spatialities: Method, Genre, Topos.” Space in Literature: Topos, Genre, Method.  Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga (ed.) (Lang, 2018). 7-17. 

„When the Mind Becomes a Place: The Modernist Psychological Novel.” Genre Problems 61.1 (2018).

"The power of social dreaming: Reappraising the lesson of East European dissidents" Educational Philosophy and Theory. May 2018. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2018.1477045)

„Strefa cienia. Europa Wschodnia i ideologie akademii.” Humanistyka (pół)peryferii, red. K. Abriszewski, A.F. Kola, J. Kowalewski, Olsztyn: Colloquia Humaniurum, 2016. 183-200. 

„Manorial Unreality: The English Country House in Graham Swift’s Out of this World.” Studies in English Literature and Culture, Ed. Anna Kędra-Kardela, Aleksandra Kędzierska, Magdalena Pypeć. Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Press, 2017. Lublin, 2017.

„The Twin Lies of Entertainment and Enlightenment: Zadie Smith as an Academic Novelist.” Academia in Fact and Fiction. Ed. Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim and Merritt Moseley. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2016

„From Character to Identity … and back?” Characters in Literary Fictions, red. Jadwiga Węgrodzka. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2015. 7-24. (współautorstwo z Jadwigą Węgrodzką)

“The City in 3D: Dystopian Past, Utopian Moment.” (Im)perfection Subverted, Reloaded and Networked: Utopian Discourse across Media. Ed. Barbara Klonowska, Zofia Kolbuszewska and Grzegorz Maziarczyk, Peter Lang, 2015. 

"Visualizing the “’Shadow World’: Dystopian Reality in the Film Adaptations of Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Mediated Utopias: From Literature to Cinema. Ed. Artur Blaim and Ludmiła Gruszewska Blaim.Peter Lang, 2015. 

“Competing Genres in the English Country House. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.” Expanding the Gothic Canon: Studies in Literature, Film and New Media. Ed. Anna Kędra-Kardela and Andrzej Sławomir Kowalczyk. Peter Lang, 2014. 

“Lost in Austen ? Or How (Not) to Teach Literary Classics.” The Lives of Texts: Exploring the Metaphor. Ed. Katarzyna Pisarska and Andrzej Sławomir Kowalczyk, Cambridge Scholar, 2013.

“The ‘Cultural Turn’ and the Changing Face of the Humanities in Poland,” Crossroads in Literature and Culture. Ed. J. Fabiszak et. al., Springer-Verlag, 2013. 

„Tożsamości miejskiej mobilności – w poszukiwaniu następcy flâneura.” Kultura Współczesna 2 (73)/2012, 25-38.

„Heterotopia Eastern Europe. Warsaw and the Memory of/in the Ruins.” Spectres of Utopia. Ed. Artur Blaim and Ludmiła Gruszewska Blaim, Peter Lang, 2012. 

„The Canon(s) and the Logic of Exclusion in Literary and Cultural Studies” in Canon (Un)bound. Ed. Jadwiga Węgrodzka. Wydawnictwo Uczelniane Politechniki Koszalińskiej, 2011. 

 “On the Impossibility of Dystopia? Children of Men or the Apocalypse Now.” w Imperfect Worlds and Dystopian Narratives in Contemporary Cinema. Ed. Artur Blaim and Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim. Peter Lang, 2011. 

“The Politics of the Borderline: the Private, the Public and Between...” Voyages Out, Voyages Home. Ed. Jane de Gay and Marion Dell, Clemson University Digital Press, 2010.    http://www.clemson.edu/cedp/press/pubs/vwcon/11.pdf

“Unreal City to City of Referents: Urban Space in Contemporary London Novels.” Journal of Narrative Theory 39.3 Fall 2009 , 305-329.

“Meaning within and without the Real. Rushdie, Sebald and the Postmodern Liquidation of Reality.” Structure and Uncertainty. Ed. Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim and Artur Blaim, Lublin: UMCS. 

“The Impossible Self and the Poetics of the Urban Hyperreal in Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man”, Zadie Smith: Critical Essays. Ed.Tracey L. Walters, New York: Lang, 2008.

"The Great Divide over Culture and Politics: Cultural Studies and Semiotics of Culture." http://www.uel.ac.uk/ccsr/documents/TerentowiczGreatDivide.pdf

“Orlando’s Transgressions” Conventions and Texts. Ed. A. Zgorzelski, Gdańsk 2003.

“From Silence to Polyphony of Voices. Virginia Woolf Reception in Poland.” The Athlone Critical Traditions Series: The Reception of British Authors in Europe. [ed.] Mary Ann Caws and Nicola Luckhurst, Continuum, 2001.