Marta Rusek

doctor, literary scholar, methodologist with teaching experience, Assistant Professor at the Department of Polish Studies Teacher Training Education at the Faculty of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University. Employee of the Centre for Multimodal Educational and Cultural Research (OMBEiK). Member of the Editorial Committee of the Narracje w eduk@cji Series of the Jagiellonian University Press. During the 2016/2017 academic year, she acted as the head of the Multimodal Educational Strategies Workshop (PMSE) at the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University. She took an active part in the Polish National Centre for Research and Development grant titled: Professional Polish Language and Literature Teacher. Practice and personalisation. She was responsible for the cooperation between the Faculty of Polish Studies and the National Museum in Kraków. Since 2019, she has been the supervisor of the Scientific Circle of Polish Studies Methodology. She delivers undergraduate and postgraduate MA courses. She has been the promotor of many BA and MA degrees.

She is the author of monographs and academic articles as well as methodological guidebooks for teachers. Her literary research includes small dramatic forms from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, literature for children and young people, stereotypes in culture and education, and currently focuses on the issue of literary anthropology of school. She combines her didactic and historical-literary interests by researching the role of the classics in Polish Studies education, as well as the function of list of obligatory readings in the student experience. She gradually develops her research on transformations in Polish Studies education, which take place under the influence of social, cultural, civilisational transformations, including, among others, progress in the field of information technology, especially new media. She addresses the issue of cultural education, including transformations in the educational activities of museums related to the postulates of the new museology.

Books

Miniaturowe światy. Z dziejów jednoaktówki w Młodej Polsce, Księgarnia Akademicka, Kraków 2007.

Ikoniczne i literackie teksty w przestrzeni nowoczesnej dydaktyki, red. A. Pilch, M. Rusek, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2015.

Współczesny museion. Edukacja kulturowa z perspektywy uniwersytetu, muzeum, szkoły, red. A. Pilch, M. Rusek, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2019.

Journal articles and chapters in collective publications

Polonista patrzy w przyszłość…, w: Technopaideia. Zaawansowane technologie w edukacji humanistycznej, red. S. Borowicz, J. Hobot-Marcinek, Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2024.

Laboratoria wspólnoty? Wokół literackich świadectw i pedagogicznych rozpoznań, „Polonistyka. Innowacje” 2023, nr 17.

Mnemosyne w muzeum i w szkole, „Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska. Sectio N, Educatio Nova” 2020, nr 5.

Alert – kryzys – przewrót. Głos w sprawie edukacji literackiej, „Konteksty Kultury” 2019, nr 4.

Literacka antropologia szkoły przełomu XIX i XX wieku. Rekonesans, „Ruch Literacki” 2014, nr 1.

O wyjściu z cienia. Dlaczego Amelia Hertzówna budzi dziś zainteresowanie badaczy?, w: Literatura niewyczerpana. W kręgu mniej znanych twórców polskiej literatury lat 1863-1914, red. K. Fiołek, TAiWPN UNIVERSITAS, Kraków 2014.

Wokół ”Achilleis” Stanisława Wyspiańskiego, w: Stanisław Wyspiański. W labiryncie świata, myśli i sztuki, red. A. Czabanowska-Wróbel, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2009.

Literary studies and didactics are fields in which I have an unfailing curiosity and where I conduct my work with passion. On the scientific trails, I once discovered Amelia Hertzówna and her works, as well as many small, often forgotten dramas from the turn of the 19^th and 20^th century. I am currently researching literary images of school in texts from different eras. I am interested in how literature reflects and co-creates the collective imaginarium. Anthropological interests allow me to see both the transformation of the concept of Bildung in the culture of the last two centuries and the transformation of school education, and thus to recognise how these processes have formed modern society. On didactic paths, on the other hand, I look for answers to the questions of how to conduct Polish Studies education in times of technological breakthrough, how to use the inspirations of the new museology in cultural education.

I value exploring new perspectives, ideas and people. That is why I work at the intersection of different environments, I am the supervisor of a student research club, and I willingly cooperate with teachers and museum professionals. I believe in the power of topic encounter and educational dialogue.

And privately… I enjoy walks with close relatives and friends, but also alone or with my dog. This is a time of conversation for me, as well as a time to look carefully at the world. Poems by well-liked poets Leśmian, Staff, Dickinson, Tranströmer, Różycki or Kochanowski make me see more, differently, more strongly. I enjoy the details of nature and architecture. I capture them in photographs. I’m in my element when it comes to movement and trips to closer and more distant places. Thanks to these, I have discovered for myself Štanjel in Slovenia, Sibiu in Romania, Óbidos in Portugal, Santillana and Oviedo in Spain or Ivoir in France. And although I am still hungry for new experiences, I am happy to return to my hometown of Kraków and the places I love, which are changing with me.

On reading practices and zero lessons

“Both the cultural route, which speaks of the historical background of reading practices, and the anthropological one, which portrays man as a creature who reads, lead to the same conclusion: the fate of reading in schools hinges on a radical change in thinking about literary education. The direction of this change can be described as a shift from language studies to anthropology, where the focus is not on knowledge of literature, either in its historical or theoretical aspects, but on literature itself and, last but not least, on the individual and communal experience of reading. This is the Archimedean point in literary education today.

[…] the most important value is to create such a didactic situation where, in spite of institutional oppression, including curricular frameworks and determinants, the student reads on his or her own behalf, developing the ability and courage to think sovereignly, independently and to recognise what moves him or her aesthetically and emotionally.

[…] the need to enter the world of ancient texts, which are increasingly receding into the past, requires their strangeness to be tamed. This leads to […] an important transformation in educational practice, namely the planning and organisation of zero lessons […], i.e. lessons that are conducted even before the work is read. They do not betray the secrets of the book, do not violate the independence of its exploration, but serve to provide cultural or linguistic tools for its initiation and continuation. Skilfully […] conducted, they are meant to prepare the student for a journey into the literary world. This […] change, however, leads to a fundamental reformulation of the process of discussing reading at school, as it places it in the cultural field. It requires the inclusion of knowledge from various fields, for example the history of customs, fashion, ideas, geography, ethnology, art, language, activates various contexts, and thus brings reading out of its isolation, its semantic emptiness.”

Alert – kryzys – przewrót. Głos w sprawie edukacji literackiej, „Konteksty Kultury” 2019, z. 4.

On the role of memory

“[…] transformations in the discourse on memory affect the collective imagination and also have consequences for the museum and the school. In light of these, a legitimate question occurs of whether, in shaping cultural memory, these institutions play the role of its liberators or whether they hold young people hostage to what has passed.”

Mnemosyne w muzeum i w szkole, „Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Sklodowska, sectio N – Educatio Nova” 2020, nr 5.

On reading hypertexts

“Reading appears as the bursting of a text, the viewer is not guided by a logical argument but by the rhythm of associations. The activity of reading-creation is marked by the movement of aporia and epiphanies (familiar to players of computer strategy games), linked to the structure of hypertextual narrative.”

Alicja w krainie liternetu, w: Kompetencje nauczyciela polonisty we współczesnej szkole, red. E. Bańkowska, A. Mikołajczuk, Warszawa 2006.

About Polish Language and Literature as a school subject

“We should […] not hide the hybrid nature of our subject, on the contrary, rather expose it. We should therefore look at Polish Language and Literature as a compact subject, consisting of different types of classes, taught by a single teacher”.

Język polski jako hybryda. O przedmiocie szkolnym i jego reorganizacji, w: Polonistyka dziś – kształcenie dla jutra, red. K. Biedrzycki, W. Bobiński, A. Janus-Sitarz, R. Przybylska, Kraków 2014, t.1.

On Amelia Hertzówna

“Unsubmerged in the realities of her era, Hertzówna’s work captures […] the experience of modern man, who manifests his individuality, his freedom, and at the same time discovers that he is condemned to constant self-determination in the world, in relation to others, in his own body, in the face of death, but also in the face of the boredom and barrenness of existence, when, as in the joke made by characters in Pastorale: the immortal soul is seasoned with stuffing for a pheasant“.

Books

Journal articles and chapters in collective publications

bio LIFESTYLE

Marta Rusek