Jodi Greig's guest appearances

Jodi Greig

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

James Joyce

Brian Taylor

Christine E. Evans

Sean Roberts

John Reuter

Aisalkyn Botoeva

Emily Greble

Morgan Liu

Jeff Sahadeo

Yuri Maltsev

Chris Price

Mikhail Krutikov

Graeme Robertson

Harriet Murav

Jose Vergara

OwlTail

This lecture examines Michał Witkowski’s 2005 critically acclaimed novel Lubiewo (Lovetown). Witkowski’s novel builds an ethnography of a lost era, permeated with nostalgia for socialist Poland and for the seemingly plentiful queer sexual encounters in parks and Soviet barracks. In my reading of the novel, I demonstrate how Witkowski interrogates mainstream Polish narratives of moving from oppression to freedom, occupation to autonomy, stagnation to development, as well as narratives of progress tied to capitalism and globalization. Lubiewo challenges these tropes through a mapping of sexual and nostalgic pleasures derived from Polish encounters with Russian imperialism, specifically taking pleasure in the “bad” socialist past, and in a decidedly queer Slavic brotherhood.

Queering Polish-Russian Relations: Soviet Tops and Polish Bottoms - Jodi Greig (2.28.19)