Izabella Kimak

ORCID: 0000-0002-2212-8174

Degrees:

Ph.D. – 2011 – Maria Curie-Sklodowska University – Women at Cultural Crossroads: Female Body and Sexuality in South Asian American Literature

M.A. – 2003 – Maria Curie-Sklodowska University – Native American Woman in Her Own Eyes: Portrayal of Women in the Works of Louise Erdrich, Linda Hogan, and Mary Crow Dog

Research interests:

Polish American literature
immigrant narratives and multiethnic US literature
sexuality and the body in American literature and culture
urban literature

Membership in scholarly societies:

2024-2026 - Secretary General of the European Association for American Studies
2022-2028 - elected representative of the Polish Association for American Studies to European Association for American Studies
2019-present - member of the Editorial Board of the Polish Journal for American Studies
member of Polish American Historical Association
2019-2023 member of the Steering Committee of the European Association for American Studies Women's Network and member of the Editorial Board of its journal WiN

Grants and fellowships:

2023-2025 - National Science Center OPUS research grant for the project "Sweet Home Chicago? The Windy City and American Writers of Polish Descent"
August-December 2021 - the Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship, research at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
February-March 2009 – research grant at JFK Institute Library, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
April 2007 – participant in HCA Spring Academy, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Major Publications:

“Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Interview with John Z. Guzlowski.” European Journal for American Studies, vol. 18, no. 4, 2023.
“Memory, Identity, Belonging: Narratives of Eastern and Central European Presence in North America.” European Journal for American Studies, vol. 18, no. 4, 2023. (with Mateusz Świetlicki)
“Generation Matters: Diasporic Reality and Myth-Making in Gurinder Chadha’s Acting Our Age and What’s Cooking?” Diaspora and Cultural Negotiations: The Films of Gurinder Chadha, edited by Shilpa Bhat Daithota. Lexington Books, 2022. 119-135.
“Bharati Mukherjee.” Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction. Edited by Patrick O’Donnell. Wiley and Sons, 2022.
“Introduction: Feminisms in American Studies in/and Crisis.” WiN, vol. 3, 2022. (with Christen Bryson, Marie Ducker, Ingrid Gessner, Elisabetta Marino, and Johanna Pitteti-Heil)
“Race, Violence, and the City: Chicago’s Black Urbanity in Contemporary American Film and Literature.” Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 15, Fall 2021, pp. 291-302. (co-authored with Zbigniew Mazur)
“(Non)Places of Bangalore: Where the East Meets the West in Bharati Mukherjee’s Miss New India.” The Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 13, Spring 2019, pp. 83-90.
“Brownstones with Stories to Tell: Houses in Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude.” Roczniki Humanistyczne, vol. LXVII, no. 11, 2019, pp. 87-94.
Exhaustion and Regeneration in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Culture. Eds. Julia Nikiel and Izabella Kimak. Peter Lang, 2019.
“Corporeality and Searching for Home in Bharati Mukherjee’s Fiction.” Beyond Trishanku: Diaspora Poetics and Homing in South Asian Women’s Writing, ed. Shilpa Bhat Daithota. Lexington Books, 2018. 145-154.
Expression and Repression in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Visual Culture. Eds. Izabella Kimak and Julia Nikiel. Peter Lang, 2017.
“Text, Image and Sound: Artistic Tiers in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Queen of Dreams.” Expression and Repression in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Visual Culture, eds. Izabella Kimak and Julia Nikiel. Peter Lang, 2017. 155-162.
“On Geographical and Metaphorical (Fault) Lines: Immigration, Acculturation and Generation Gap in South Asian American Women’s Fiction.” Roczniki Humanistyczne LXIII (2015): 251-260.
“A bridge that seizes crossing”: Art, Violence and Ethnic Identity in Meena Alexander’s Manhattan Music. Polish Journal for American Studies 8 (2014): 149-166.
“Book/Movie/Installation: The Interpenetration of the Literary and the Visual in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega.” Visuality and Vision in American Literature. Eds. Zbigniew Maszewski, Weronika Łaszkiewicz and Tomasz Sawczuk. Białystok: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, 2014. 91-98.
Bicultural Bodies: A Study of South Asian American Women’s Fiction. Peter Lang, 2013.
Inne bębny: Różnica i niezgoda w literaturze i kulturze amerykańskiej. Eds. Ewa Antoszek, Katarzyna Czerwiec-Dykiel and Izabella Kimak. Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2013.
“Konflikt pokoleń czy wolność artystycznego wyboru? Twórczość Jhumpy Lahiri wobec kwestii etniczności w literaturze hindusko-amerykańskiej.” Inne bębny: Różnica i niezgoda w literaturze i kulturze amerykańskiej. Eds. Ewa Antoszek, Katarzyna Czerwiec-Dykiel and Izabella Kimak. Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2013. 177-187.
“Bharati Mukherjee and the Postcolonial Predicament: Looking Back in The Holder of the World.” In Other Words: Dialogizing Race, Postcoloniality, and Ethnicity. Eds. Ewa Łuczak, Justyna Wierzchowska and Joanna Ziarkowska. Peter Lang, 2012.
“Americans Misreading (Other) Americans: Racial Subjects in the post-9/11 US in Two South Asian American Novels”. (Mis)Reading America: American Dreams, Fictions and Illusions. Eds. Jerzy Durczak and Paweł Frelik. Cracow: Universitas, 2011.
“Abha Dawesar”. The Encyclopedia of Asian-American Literature. Ed. Seiwoong Oh. New York: Facts on File, 2007.
“Shaila Abdullah”. The Encyclopedia of Asian-American Literature. Ed. Seiwoong Oh. New York: Facts on File, 2007.