Anna Włodarczyk

doctor, literature scholar and didactics expert, Assistant Professor at the Department of Polish Studies Teacher Training Education, secretary of the website of the Centre for Multimodal Educational and Cultural Research (OMBEiK) and editor of website at the Faculty of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University and co-founder of the PolishStudies_MindTech platform. She coordinates the collaboration between the OMBEiK and: the Malopolska Science Centre Cogiteon, Faculty of Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and Museum of Photography in Kraków. Since 2022, scientific editor of the Jagiellonian University Press series Narracje w eduk@cji.

From 2016 to 2021, member of the Multimodal Educational Strategies Workshop (PMSE) of the Faculty of Polish Studies at the JU. Co-founder of Szkice Jagiellońskie series since 2007. For many years, she held the position of coordinator of the subject Information and media technology in the work of a Polish Language and Literature teacher (Pl. Technologia informacyjno-medialna w pracy nauczyciela polonisty) and coordinator for the Festival of Science at the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University. Since 2012 she has been responsible for the development of the Department of Polish Studies Teacher Training Education (KPEN) website.

Since 2012, she has actively participated in other research projects of the Department of Polish Studies Teacher Training Education. Multiple winner of competitions for funding of research conducted by young scientists and participants of doctoral studies, she carried out her own research projects from targeted grants for young scientists awarded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland. She participated in an implementation project carried out under the Operational Programme: Knowledge Education Development, Axis III Higher Education for the Economy and Development (POWR.03.01.00-00-KN01/18 ‘Professional Polish Language and Literature teacher. Practice and personalisation’). She is currently undertaking projects with funds from the Excellence Initiative at the Jagiellonian University.

She conducts research on the transformations of contemporary didactics in the context of philosophical and cultural inspirations, as well as interdisciplinary research on the theory of interpretation of literary texts and the use of information and media technology tools in the workshop of a modern Polish Language and Literature teacher. Her academic interests and research work are focused on issues of the philosophy of interpretation and cultural theory of literature, in particular within postmodern interpretative categories as tools for the study of text and image. These include the following research areas: the laboratory of texts of culture, ontology of text and image, interliterary spaces of education, the art of detail, photographic narrative, the art of interpretation, the ethics of interpretation, postmodern interpretative categories, new technologies and multimodality.

Author of books

Etyka interpretacji tekstu literackiego. Postmodernizm. Humanizm. Dydaktyka, seria: Narracje w Eduk@cji, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2014.

Styl terapeutyczny w pracy nauczyciela polonisty, Kraków 2007.

Co-editor of books

Międzyliteratura jako przestrzeń dialogu. Studia dedykowane pamięci Profesor Anny Pilch, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2022.

Granit i tęcza. Dzieła i osobowość Józefa Czapskiego, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2019.

Szkice o pograniczach nauki, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2007.

Selected scientific publications

Artystyczne imaginaria Płonącej żyrafy: Dalí – Grochowiak – Pinińska-Bereś, w: Międzyliteratura jako przestrzeń dialogu .Studia dedykowane pamięci Profesor Anny Pilch, red. Włodarczyk Anna, Borowicz Sebastian, Wawer Karolina, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2022.

Dotknięcie człowieka – wskrzeszenie obrazu. Studium narracji pisanej fotografią Krzysztofa Millera, “Filoteknos” 2021.

Muzealne przestrzenie interpretacji. Obiekt. Doświadczenie. Narracja, w: Współczesny museion. Edukacja kulturowa z perspektywy uniwersytetu, muzeum, szkoły, red. Pilch Anna i Rusek Marta, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2019

Etyka interpretacji jako doświadczanie lektury tekstu – studium praktyczne. Theodore Roethke “Walc mojego taty” (1942), w: Język – lektura – interpretacja w dydaktyce szkolnej, red. Jaskółowa Ewa, Wójcik-Dudek Małgorzata, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, Katowice 2018.

Eksponat jako medium. Spotkanie w pokoju Czapskiego, w: Granit i tęcza. Dzieła i osobowość Józefa Czapskiego, red. Pilch Anna i Włodarczyk Anna Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2019.

Z humanistyką czuję łączność od urodzenia, choć nie w kontrze do nauk ścisłych. Mój umysł jest głęboko analityczny, nieustannie podsycany przez wrodzoną wysoką wrażliwość. Dzięki niej dostrzegam wszelkie subtelności. Nic nie uchodzi mojej uwadze.

I have felt connected to the humanities since birth, although not in contrast to the sciences. My mind is deeply analytical, constantly fuelled by an innate high sensitivity. It allows me to perceive all subtleties. Nothing escapes my attention.

Science is an integral part of myself. As an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University, I educate future teachers, continuously searching for unconventional solutions. I conduct research on the transformations of contemporary didactics and constantly develop my competences, while the results of my research work are reflected in interpretative practice.

In every aspect of life, I believe that accompanying one another and awareness of a shared path is paramount. I am equally interested in the in-depth encounter with the individual and the text.

In my work with students, building a dialogical relationship and recognising individual potential becomes the goal that motivates them to self-reflection and personal development.

In my academic practice, I use a number of disciplines that multimodally illuminate the observed detail. My love of radio plays and short films allows me to document reality more powerfully and record it with a sensitive eye. I am as fascinated by Iranian cinema as I am by the cinematography of Krzysztof Kieślowski.

The spaces of imagination and the layers of sensitivity of my daughter Sława are still an inexhaustible resource of experience and experimentation for me.

In our free time, our family get on bikes or put on skis. We conquer Poland from the Beskids to the Baltic Sea on the Vistula Bicycle Route. We travel across Europe, taking in the sights of forest trails and the refreshing breeze. We have already covered thousands of kilometres.

Nowadays, one should expect Polish Studies education to offer numerous choices in the sphere of multiculturalism, to help build the student’s own image of the world and people, as well as his or her own identity, and one that would teach him or her to be open to people, to The Other. Indeed, such a stance would protect both the teacher and the pupil from assuming a reductionist stance and from being radicalised, that is, indoctrinated and liberalised. In addition to accepting objective values, the young person will come into contact with values hitherto conceived as anti-values, which will at the same time increase his or her openness to perceiving and analysing values so far rejected. In this way, the pupil will be able to transform cultural values into values that will lead him or her to build a developed axiological awareness.

Etyka interpretacji tekstu literackiego. Postmodernizm. Humanizm. Dydaktyka, Kraków 2014, s. 36.

The art of interpretation, especially in school didactics of Polish Studies, must therefore become a process of developing general dispositions and skills, allowing the student to independently undertake any interpretative steps in relation to texts previously unknown to him or her, i.e. outside the obligatory list of readings. At the same time, it is worth sensitising young readers to the fact that non-definitiveness of interpretation does not at all mean free interpretation or lack of any rules in its scope. For the ethics of reading a text requires attention to be paid to the fact that the text itself indicates certain directions and constitutes a limit for the interpreter’s ingenuity and imagination. What is important is that the student is able to listen to the text, to enter into dialogue with it, that is, to limit himself or herself and to be responsible in an ethical way.

Etyka interpretacji tekstu literackiego. Postmodernizm. Humanizm. Dydaktyka, Kraków 2014, s. 37.

I presume that an individual reading of image and text provides the basis for asking ourselves questions as we are in the role of observer, recipient, interpreter and co-participant in culture, tradition and history. The close encounter and experience of photography thus becomes the construction of co-presence in the world and the maintenance of existential continuity (see Barthes 2008: 151). For I believe that photography sometimes brings the best answers to questions yet unasked that come to us completely by chance, from the outside, from observation of the world. They function as a mirror for ourselves. A reflection that has not yet revealed itself, and so they are not something unrecognised, unnoticed or overlooked. They could not have appeared beforehand if it were not for that moment brought about by an encounter with a photograph. It was the moment that triggered them. The core of the issue, however, is what and how and why do we observe? Both the photographer and the viewer must ask themselves these questions. By weaving a personal narrative, they reveal a philosophy of the shot, the frame, the study of detail.

Dotknięcie człowieka – wskrzeszenie obrazu : studium narracji pisanej fotografią Krzysztofa Millera, „Filoteknos”, tom 11: Figury pamięci : czytanie – doświadczenie – emocje), Wrocław 2021, s. 157.

However, one must bear in mind the impermanence of the meaning of photography. For the image still refers to a fragment of reality and is a carrier of certain meanings, until it begins to function in public opinion. And even if nowadays we find it difficult to discern ourselves in the historical process, the possibility of articulating our own experiences mediated by photography strengthens our cultural identity. Photography is a testimony and a self-trigger of memory, a contextual game.

Dotknięcie człowieka – wskrzeszenie obrazu : studium narracji pisanej fotografią Krzysztofa Millera, „Filoteknos”, tom 11: Figury pamięci : czytanie – doświadczenie – emocje), Wrocław 2021, s. 166.

After all, in the reception and interpretation play, the aim is to accentuate the viewer’s enthusiasm, a vivid reaction to the work and, most importantly, to expand the space for one’s own reflections, which would not necessarily be enriched by prematurely supplied knowledge of the artefact itself. For the depth of experience of a work of art is measured by our impressions, activated analogies, memories and various thoughts. It is these that awaken the hunger for knowledge. This interaction with the work is not at all about its overall reception, its detailed and closed interpretation. Studying a detail is almost a bodily proximity to the artist, touching him in a looking-painting relationship. The essence of this dialogical rendezvous is to encounter a resistance, a moment, a detail, which may (but need not) constitute a kind of quintessence of the poetic nature of the painting. Indeed, they are, after all, a testimony to how it has spoken to us and thus somehow determined our relationship to the world through an engaging detail or evoked impression. In other words, the one who looks closely gains a deeper insight into himself.

Artystyczne imaginaria „Płonącej żyrafy”: Dalí – Grochowiak – Pinińska-Bereś, w: Międzyliteratura jako przestrzeń dialogu : studia dedykowane pamięci Profesor Anny Pilch, red. A. Włodarczyk, S. Borowicz, K. Wawer, seria: Narracje w Edukacji, Kraków 2022, s. 83.

Anna Włodarczyk

Author of books

Co-editor of books

Selected scientific publications

bio LIFESTYLE

Anna Włodarczyk