Joanna Zach

Professor at the Faculty of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She focuses on modernist poetry, beginning with mid-nineteenth-century forerunners through twentieth-century canonical texts to the decline of the phenomenon. She devoted most of her research to Cyprian Kamil Norwid and Czesław Miłosz, in whose interpretation she foregrounds the importance of poetic art in the subtle scrutinizing of civilizational transformations. Zach authored books in Polish, English, German, French, and Finnish, including Monolog różnogłosy. O dramatach współczesnych Cypriana Norwida (A Many-Voice Monologue: On Cyprian Norwid’s Contemperorary Dramas; Kraków 1993), Miłosz i poetyka wyznania (Miłosz and the Poetics of Confession; Kraków 2002), Biologia i teodycea. Homo poeticus Czesława Miłosza (Biology and Theodice: Czesław Miłosz’s Homo Poeticus; Kraków 2017). In 1994–1999, she taught Polish language and literature at the University of Helsinki; in 2000–2002, she was a member of the Helsinki Forum (International Association of Intellectuals and Writers). Zach received scholarships from the Oxford University (St. Anne’s College) and Harvard University (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Prof. Stanisław Barańczak). In 2005, she was the Podlich Distinguished Fellow at Claremont McKenna College in California. She held lectures and presentations about the works of Czesław Miłosz at, among other places, Michigan State University, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Saint Petersburg State University, Petersburg University, Vilnius University, Vytautas Magnas University in Kaunas, and the Sorbonne in Paris.