About My Research

I am currently a first-year doctoral student, doing research in the field of literature and religion with focus on the Book of Psalms and the European modernist poetry. Before coming to Warwick I have completed my double MA in English and Translation Studies, and Polish and Comparative Literature (with qualifications to teach English and Polish as foreign languages) at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. I also studied for one year at the University College London as an affiliate Erasmus student.

Department: English and Comparative Literary Studies

Supervisor: Dr. Emma Mason

Description of My Research:

My PhD thesis discusses the presence of the Psalm in European modernist poetry with primary focus on the works by T.S. Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke, Józef Wittlin and Marina Tsvetaeva. The aim of my research is to analyse the form, function and meaning of the Psalmic intertext present in the modernist verse, as well as deepen the understanding of the relationship between modernism and religion. A comparative approach which I have adopted in my research allows me to investigate poetry written in four different languages and literary traditions, which concurs with the perception of modernism as an inherently international movement.

Conferences

"Translation Studies and/or Comparative Literature: Approaching the Other" 6th Students' Translation Workshops, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, 16-17 May 2011.

“Silencing Friday: Re-appropriation of Identity in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe and Angela Carter’s “Master”” (Mis)appropriation – University of Oxford English Postgraduate Conference, 4 June 2010.

“Gogol’s St. Petersburg as a Nightmarish City” Nightmare Conference organised by the Institute of English Studies, University of London, 5 March 2010.

“Polyphony and the Voice of the Translator: On the English Translations of Paul Celan’s Die Todesfuge” 4th Students’ Translation Workshops, Jagiellonian University, 26 May 2009.

Reading Groups and Seminars

Co-organiser of the Theology Reading Group, hosted by the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies.

Co-organiser of the Arts Faculty Seminar Series.

Joanna Rzepa

Email: J dot M dot Rzepa at warwick dot ac dot uk