dr hab. Dominika Ferens, prof. UWr
Department of American Literature and Culture
dominika.ferens@uwr.edu.pl
Bio:
Dominika Ferens is an associate professor at the Institute of English Studies, where she teaches American literature and culture. She received a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (1999) and a post-doctoral degree from the University of Wrocław). She has also worked at universities in Hannover, Tomsk, and Los Angeles. Most of her research has explored American minority literatures through theories of affect, race, gender, and sexuality. She is currently writing a study on Sigrid Nunez and co-editing a collected volume titled Shape Shifting Sensibilities: New Approaches to Winnifred Eaton/Onoto Watanna under review at McGill Queen’s University Press. She won two Fulbright grants (1994-1996, 2021/2022). She co-founded in 2006 and co-edits InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies. In the years 2011-2014, she served as the President of the Polish Association for American Studies.
Publications:
(1) 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
Recasting Winnifred Eaton: New Approaches to Onoto Watanna. Co-editor with Rena Heinrich and Shoshannah Ganz. McGill-Queen’s University Press, under review.
Literary and Cultural Perspectives of the Hinterlands. Co-editor with Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak, Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice, and Marcin Tereszewski. Routledge, Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory, 2024.
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.
- Thematic issues of journals
InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies 11a (2016), Special Issue: Ugly Bodies: Queer Perspectives on Illness, Disability, and Aging. Co-editor withTomasz Sikora. Introduction: Let’s Talk about (Queer) Sex”
InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies 11b (2016), Special Issue: Brzydkie ciała: Queer wobec choroby, niepełnosprawności i starości. Co-editor withTomasz Sikora.
InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies 5 (2010), Feminist Issue: Is There a Gay Bias in Queer Studies? Co-editor with Krystyna Mazur.
- Articles
“Sigrid Nunez’s Minority Cosmopolitanism and the Ethics of Interest.” Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 59 (2025), forthcoming.
“Narrative Hospitality: Sigrid Nunez’s Poetics of Fragmentation.” Review of International American Studies, forthcoming.
“Aerial Views, Pedestrian Ways: Fragmentation in D. J. Waldie’s Holy Land.” Flyover Fictions. Eds. Sascha Pöhlman and Cornelia Klecker. Lincoln: Univeristy of Nebraska Press, 2025.
“Fragmentation.” Experimental Life Writing Today. Eds. Vanessa Guignery and Wojciech Drąg. Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2025.
“How Does It Feel to Be at Univeristy: Affect in Contemporary North American Campus Fiction.” Academic Journal of Modern Philology 22 (2024): 107-117.
“The Transnational Hinterlands of Los Angeles in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange.” Literary and Cultural Perspectives of the Hinterlands. Eds. Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak, et al. Routledge, 2024. 25-38.
“Editors’ Introduction. Hinterlands: A Return of the Outside.” Co-author with Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak, Marcin Tereszewski, and Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice. Literary and Cultural Perspectives of the Hinterlands. Eds. Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak, et al. Routledge, 2024. 1-22.
“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. 207-226.
“Dlaczego Brokeback Mountain nie jest tragedią?” [Why Is Brokeback Mountain 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.
“Narrating Chaos: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s DICTEE and Korean American Fragmentary Writings.” Anglica Wratislaviensia 57 (2019): 25-35.
“Intersections of American Literature and Ethnography.” Český lid/The Czech Ethnological Journal 103.3 (2016): 371-394.
“Prolínání literatury a etnografie ve Spojených státech amerických.” Český lid/The Czech Ethnological Journal 103.3 (2016): 395-418.
“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.
“Pogadajmy o (kalekim) seksie.” Co-authored with Tomasz Sikora. InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies. Brzydkie ciała: Queer wobec choroby, niepełnosprawności i starości 11b (2016): i-viii.
“’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.
“Literature, Ethnography, and Self-representation in a Globalizing World.” Interstudia 15, Special Issue: Cultural Representations in the Era of Globalization (2014):73-85.
“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.
“Singular Ways of Knowing: Fiction by American Women Anthropologists.” Consortium: A Journal of Crossdisciplinary Inquiry [University of Colorado, USA] (2011):137-162.
“Diachronic vs. Synchronic Accounts of Cultural Difference in Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, the Timeless People.” The American Uses of History: Essays on Public Memory. Eds. Tomasz Basiuk, Sylwia Kuźniar Markowska, and Krystyna Mazur. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. 133-146.
“Queer Ways of Knowing Islands: O.A. Bushnell, Molokai.” LINQ [James Cook University, Australia] 37 (November 2010): 128-140.
“Editorial: Is There a Gay Bias in Queer Studies?” Co-authored with Krystyna Mazur. InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies 5 (2010): n. pag.
“Telling a Small Place: Gloria Naylor’s Negotiations with Ethnography in Mama Day.” Anglica Wratislaviensia 47 (2009): 17-26.
“Negotiating the Legacy of Ethnography: Autoethnographic Strategies in Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Heads by Harry and Achy Obejas’s Days of Awe.” Ideology and Rhetoric: Constructing America. Ed. Bożenna Chylińska. Amersham: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. 121-133.
“The Deserving Heathen: Missionary Ethnography of China and its American Converts.” Transpacific Interactions: The United States and China, 1880-1950. Eds. Vanessa Künnemann and Ruth Mayer. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 185-204.
“Multiculturalism and the Legacy of Ethnography.” PASE Papers 2008: Studies in Culture and Literature. Vol. 2. Eds. Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak and Anna Cichoń. Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT, 2009. 53-66.
“A Pole with a Stake in Asian American Studies.” Amerasia Journal 34.2 (Fall 2008): 1-13.
“A Confidence Man in the Orient: Karl May and the German Colonial Enterprise.” Werkwinkel 3.1 (Spring 2008): 13-33.
“Gossip From Behind a Closed Door: Revisiting Girls’ Boarding School Culture.” Out Here: Local and International Perspectives in Queer Studies. Eds. Dominika Ferens, Tomasz Basiuk, and Tomasz Sikora. Amersham: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2006.
“Winnifred Eaton/Onoto Watanna: Establishing Ethnographic Authority.” Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature. Eds. Zhou Xiaojing and Samina Najmi. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005. 30-47.
“Zwiedzanie cudzych kolonii. Wiedza i władza w afrykańskich powieściach Karola Maya.” [Power and Knowledge in the African Novels of Karl May] Er(r)go: Teoria, Literatura, Kultura 8.2 (2004). 73-90.
“Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far: The Politics of Chinatown Reporting.” Postcolonial Subjects: Canadian and Australian Perspectives. Ed. Mirosława Buchholtz. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2004.
“Winnifred Eaton’s ’Japanese’ Novels as a Field Experiment.” Middlebrow Moderns: Popular American Women Writers of the 1920s. Eds. Lisa Botshon and Meredith Goldsmith. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003.
“Heteronormatywna funkcja angielskiej szkoły żeńskiej.” [The Heteronormative Function of British Girls’ Boarding Schools]. W poszukiwaniu małej dziewczynki. Eds. Izabela Kowalczyk and Edyta Zierkiewicz. Poznań: Konsola 2003. 135-143.
“Tarzan, ‘de sterkste winkt.’” Zorro & Co.: Populaire personages en de koloniale verbeelding. Eds. Nadia Lie and Theo D’haen. Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2002. 85-99.
“Staking Claims: Henryk Sienkiewicz and the Chinese in California.” Anglica Wratislaviensia 31 (2002).
“Ja Tarzan, ty Jane. O fascynacji eugeniką.” [Me Tarzan, You Jane: On the Romance of Eugenics] Edukacyjne Konteksty kultury popularnej. Eds. Witold Jakubowski and Edyta Zierkiewicz. Kraków: Impuls, 2002: 59-72.
“Personal Reflections of a Half-Chinese Victorian Reporter in Jamaica.” Proceedings of American Portraits and Self-Portraits, Annual Conference of the Polish Association for American Studies, Puławy, November 2001: 14-24.
“Native Americans, Chinese and White Progressivists in the Land of Sunshine.” ATQ Special Issue: Cohabiting America: Native Americans and Euroamericans in the Nineteenth Century 15.4 (December 2001): 305-316.
“Two Faces of the Oriental(ist): Missionary and Travel Writing on China and Japan.” British and American Studies Vol. 3: The Local Colors of the Stars and Stripes. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2001: 127-139.
“Wayward Conquistador or Transcultural Hybrid? Commentaries on Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca’s The Account.” Anglica Wratislaviensia 36 (2001): 21-34.
“Białe turystki na Dalekim Wschodzie: Płeć i rasa w dziewiętnastowiecznej etnografii.” [White Women Tourists in the Far East: Gender and Race in Nineteenth-century Ethnography]. Gender w humanistyce. Ed. Małgorzata Radkiewicz. Kraków: Rabid, 2001: 288-297.
“Oriental Plots: Decoupling Race and Culture in Early Asian American Literature.” Papers in Literature and Culture: Proceedings of the 8th International PASE Conference. Wrocław, 2000. 43-49.
“Tangled Kites: Sui Sin Far’s Negotiations with Race and Readership.” Amerasia Journal 25.2 (Summer 1999): 116-144.
“Political Aspects of Chinese American Literature: Changing Aims.” Literature and Society: Publications of the Fifth Annual Fulbright Conference. Poznań, Poland (1994): 5-9.
“Didacticism in Chinese American Literature: David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly,” Anglica Wratislaviensia 27 (1994): 5-11.
“Contemporary Chinese American Writers Versus the Perpetuators of Myths and Stereotypes.” Anglica Wratislaviensia 25 (1993): 50-59.
