I am currently a third-year doctoral student, doing research in the field of literature and religion with focus on European modernist poetry. Before coming to Warwick I 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 University College London as an affiliate Erasmus student. You can find more information on my CV page.

Department: English and Comparative Literary Studies

Supervisor: Dr. Emma Mason

My PhD thesis explores the complex relationship between cultural and aesthetic modernism and modernist theology, focusing on the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Józef Wittlin. Discussing the modernist poetics of religious experience in the context of the theological debates of the turn of the twentieth century, I aim to show the parallels between Rilke’s, Eliot’s, and Wittlin’s critical and poetic explorations of the relationship between individual experience and inherited spiritual tradition. I suggest that a closer investigation of the key notions discussed in the theological debates of the period (including unprecedented interest in mysticism and mystical experience, and the so-called modernist controversy in the Roman Catholic Church) can help us understand the nature of the modernist poetics of religious experience and appreciate the historical context from which it stemmed.

You can find more information on my publications and the papers I have presented at conferences on my Conferences and Publications website.

In March 2014 I successfully completed the ‘Postgraduate Award: Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’ programme run by Warwick's Learning and Development Centre and accredited with the Higher Education Academy.

During the 2013-2014 academic year I am teaching the postgraduate module 'Translation from English into Polish' at the Polish University Abroad and the Polish Research Centre in London.

In the academic year 2012-2013 I taught weekly seminars for the undergraduate module EN122 Modes of Reading.

I have experience in teaching Polish as a foreign and second language at all levels of language proficiency. I worked as a language tutor at the summer courses run by the Jagiellonian University School of Polish Language and Culture in Kraków in 2011 and 2012.

Joanna Rzepa

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