Dominika Ferens is associate professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, where she teaches American literature. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (1999) and a post-doctoral degree from the University of Wrocław (2011). Most of her research explores American minority literatures through theories of affect, race, gender, and sexuality. Using the framework of postcolonial and gender studies, she has also analyzed the fiction of such popular American and European writers as Karl May, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Zane Grey, and Ernest Hemingway. In Edith and Winnifred Eaton: Chinatown Missions and Japanese Romances (U of Illinois P, 2002), she examined the paradoxes of Orientalism in the writings of Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna. Her book Ways of Knowing Small Places: Intersections of America Literature and Ethnography since the 1960s (Wrocław UP, 2011) looked at literature’s quarrels and affinities with ethnography in the age of multiculturalism. Currently, she is working on a book project titled Animating Interest: Affect in the Writings of Sigrid Nunez at the University of California, Irvine. A co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Group at the University of Wrocław in 1999, and co-editor of the open-access queer studies journal InterAlia since 2006, she has been instrumental in legitimating gender and queer studies research in Poland.

Publications:

Monographs          

Ways of Knowing Small Places: Intersections of American Literature and Ethnography since the 1960s. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2010.

Edith and Winnifred Eaton: Chinatown Missions and Japanese Romances. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002.

Edited collections

Eating America: Crisis, Sustenance, Sustainability. Co-Editor with Justyna Kociatkiewicz and Laura Suchostawska. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015.

Out Here: Local and International Perspectives in Queer Studies. Co-editor with Tomasz Basiuk and Tomasz Sikora. Amersham: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2006.

Parametry pożądania: Kultura odmieńców wobec homofobii. [Parameters of Desire: Queer Culture vs. Homophobia]. Co-editor withTomasz Basiuk and Tomasz Sikora. Kraków: Universitas, 2006.

Traveling Subjects: American Journeys in Space and Time. Co-editor with Justyna Kociatkiewicz and Elżbieta Klimek-Dominiak. Kraków: Rabid, 2004.

A Queer Mixture: Gender perspectives on Minority Sexual Identities. Co-editor withTomasz Basiuk and Tomasz Sikora. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Śląsk, 2002.

Selected Articles        

“Afektywny i emocjonalny potencjał Następnym razem pożar” [The Affective and Emotional Potential of The Fire Next Time]. James Baldwin. Ed. Anna Pochmara. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2021.

“Affect and Form in the Writings of the Eaton Sisters.” Asian American Literature in Transition, Volume One: 1850-1930. Eds. Josephine Lee and Julia Lee. Cambridge University Press, 2021.

“Dlaczego Brokeback Mountain nie jest tragedią?” [Why Is Brokeback Mountian not a Tragedy?]. Annie Proulx. Ed. Marek Paryż. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2020. 139-156.

“Silence, Sound, and Affect.” Res Rhetorica 7.4 (2020): 32-48.

“Lissa: An EthnoGraphic Experiment.” Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature: Formal Intersections between Narrative Fiction and Other Media 44.2 (2020): 83-98.

“Narrating Chaos: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s DICTEE and Korean American Fragmentary Writings.” Anglica Wratislaviensia 57 (2019): 25-35.

“Can the Home Be Interesting? Homeliness and Affects in Contemporary Asian American Fiction.” Contemporary Literary Studies 13 (2016) [Kiev National Linguistics University, Ukraine]: 694-704.

 “Belated Interest: Reading the Fiction of Sigrid Nunez through Silvan Tomkins’s Affect Theory.” Spectrum of Emotions. Eds. Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak and Wojciech Drąg. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016. 113-122.

“Big fish: On the Relative Popularity of Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway.” Unpopular Culture. Eds. Sascha Pöhlman and Martin Lüthe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016.

“Let’s Talk about (Queer) Sex.” Co-authored with Tomasz Sikora. InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies. Ugly Bodies: Queer Perspectives on Illness, Disability, and Aging 11a (2016): i-iv.

“’Where the Wild Things Are’: Excursions into Mixed-Race Literature through Affect Theory.” Wild Zones: Space, Experience, Consciousness. Eds. Jacek Partyka and Jerzy Kamionowski. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015. 93-104.

“Between Taste and Interest: Reading Asian American Literature in the Age of Food Literacy.” Eating America: Crisis, Sustenance, Sustainability. Eds. Justyna Kociatkiewicz, Laura Suchostawska, and Dominika Ferens. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015. 277-296.

“Zane Grey.” Amerykański western literacki w XX wieku. Między historią, fantazją a ideologią. Agata Preis-Smith and Marek Paryż, eds. Warszawa: Czuły Barbarzyńca, 2013. 36-57.

“A Pole with a Stake in Asian American Studies” [translated into Chinese]. Global Identities: Local Voices. Amerasia Journal at 40 Years, Chinese Language Edition, Vol. 1 (June 2013): 312-330.

“’You can’t generalize, professor, though I know NYU is a good school’: Abstract vs. Legitimate Knowledges in Russell Leong’s ‘Eclipse.’” Amerasia Journal. Special Edition Word & Image: Russell Leong [University of California Los Angeles] 37.1 (2011): 61-76.