profiles

Dr. John Merchant

Degrees

Degrees

Ph.D., Slavic Languages & Literature, University of Chicago, 2006. Dissertation: The Impact of Irish-Ireland on Young Poland, 1890-1918

M.A., Polish Literature, University of Illinois-Chicago, 1997

M.A., Education, The Ohio State University, 1994

B.A. University of Iowa, 1990

Research Interests

• Polish and Irish Literature
• Polish American Literature

Professional & Community Affiliations

Loyola Service

• Organized student reading of Dziady, by Adam Mickiewicz, October 2013.
• Faculty reviewer and judge for the Undergraduate Student FORUM, a competition of papers on Central and Eastern Europe.

Service Outside Loyola

• Public lecture - "Polish American Poetry: Reading Between the Lines," April 2013, Crown Center.
• Public lecture - "The Literature of the Polish American Experience," September 2013, Chopin Theatre.

Courses Taught

• UCLR 100 (Post-war Polish Literature; Polish and Irish Literature)
• LITR 200 European Masterpieces (Polish Identity in Literature, 1863-1945; Interwar Poland; Women in Polish Culture; Post-war Polish Literature; Polish Short Stories; Polish Fantasy; Polish and Irish Literature: Reading Nature and the Individual)
• LITR 221 Polish Authors (Writing the Polish Voice; Post-WWII Literature)
• LITR 280 (Polish American Literature; Women in Polish Literature and Film)
• LITR 283 Major Authors in Translation (Writing the Polish Voice)

Selected Publications

Books

• The Impact of Irish-Ireland on Young Poland, 1890-1918. (Boulder: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 2008), 320 pages

Articles

• Book chapter: “The Scars of St. Stuart: Time-traveling Down 26th Street,” in Creative Expression and Polish Chicago, in reviewBook Review: Katarzyna Bartoszyńska, Estranging the Novel: Poland, Ireland, and Theories of World Literature, in review
• Book Review: Kaoru Yamamoto, Rethinking Joseph Conrad’s Concepts of Community: Strange Fraternity, The Polish Review (Fall 2021)“Anthony Bukoski – An Outpost of Polishness,” Rocznik Komparatystyczny – Comparative Yearbook 9 (Summer 2019)
• Book Review: Adam Mickiewicz, Forefather’s Eve, Trans. Charles S. Kraszewski, Slavic Review (Spring 2018)
• Book Review: John Guzlowski, Echoes of Tattered Tongues, Polish American Studies Journal (Spring 2017)
• Book Review: George Z. Gasyna, Polish, Hybrid, and Otherwise: Exilic Discourse in Joseph Conrad and Witold Gombrowicz. Slavic and East European Journal, Winter 2014, in SEEJ 60.2 (Summer 2016)
• “Universal Identities and Local Realities: Young Poland's (Mis)readings of Synge.” Eds. Sabine Egger and John McDonagh. Polish-Irish Encounters in the New and Old Europe (Reimagining Ireland series), (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), 77-87
• “Poets Who Kept Guard of the City,” First Things (on-line edition). January 15, 2008.
• “Krakow 2001,” Lyrical Iowa 2003, October 2003, 36
• “The Impact of Irish-Ireland on Young Poland, 1890-1918,” New Hibernia Review, Vol. 5, No. 3, Autumn 2001, 42-65
• Book Review: Michael J. Mikoś, Polish Baroque and Enlightenment Literature: An Anthology. In Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 43, No. 4, Winter 1999, 704-705
• “Recent Polish-American Fiction,” The Sarmatian Review, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, January 1998, 501-508

Translations

• The Polish Whitman by Marta Skwara, forthcoming (University of Iowa Press, July 2022)