University of Silesia Faculty Exchange Program brings Professor Eugenia Sojka to UAlberta September 2016
The Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies is pleased to welcome Dr. Eugenia Sojka to the University of Alberta campus this September as the inaugural participant in the Faculty Exchange Program with University of Silesia. Dr. Sojka joins us from the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures in the Department of American and Canadian Studies where she is Associate Professor and Director of the Canadian Studies Centre at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.
She holds a Ph.D. in English (with a dissertation on Canadian literature) from Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her research interests focus on Canadian diasporic and Indigenous literature and culture, and intercultural and Indigenous drama, theatre and performance. She is author of numerous journal publications in the area of Canadian Studies and also editor and co-editor of several books and journals: (De)Constructing Canadianness. Myth of the Nation and Its Discontents, Embracing Otherness. Canadian Minority Discourses in Transcultural Perspectives (with Tomasz Sikora), Państwo, Naród, Tożsamość w Dyskursach Kulturowych Kanady [State, Nation, Identity in Canadian Cultural Discourses] (with Mirosława Buchholtz) and Alice Munro:Reminiscence, Interpretation, Adaptation, and Comparison (with Mirosława Buchholtz). She pioneered the teaching of Canadian Studies at the University of Silesia and founded the Canadian Studies Centre and Canadian Studies Student Circle.
Since 2000 she has been organizing annual Days of Canadian Culture, workshops, conferences, as well as lectures and readings by Canadian writers, artists and academics Several M.A. theses supervised by her were awarded the Nancy Burke Best M.A. thesis Award‖ in Poland. She received grants for students to travel to Canada to pursue research and studies and for the development of Canadian Studies at the University of Silesia. She is the initiator and the University of Silesia coordinator of the nationwide contest on Canada for high school students, Discover Canada.
During her time at UAlberta, Dr. Sojka will be hosted by the Department of English and Film Studies and will deliver lectures on topics including Canadian culture and literature, comparative Canadian and Polish perspectives, traditional Indigenous dramaturgies in Canada, transcultural dialogue, the Polish diaspora, and rethinking "Canadianness".
For more on the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures at the University of Silesia, please click here.