CALL FOR PAPERS 1/2026 - Heritage in Culture

2025-06-11

Issue 1/2026

Heritage in Culture: Genre studies and Genealogy

Submissions: 2026, February 15

Editor: Tatiana Czerska (University of Silesia in Katowice)

In the first issue, the editorial team invites authors to reflect on the notion of heritage, understood both in the context of generational inheritance and family origin, as well as in the cultural sense (e.g., genre heritage in literature, linguistic heritage). Contemporary women’s literature is a space of intense engagement with heritage — in formal (generic-genological) as well as personal (genealogical) terms.

In recent years, there has been a visible interest in returning to one’s roots, genealogy, and pursuing identity, which is reflected in culture — for instance, in such recently published works as The People’s History of Poland by Adam Leszczyński and Peasant Women. A Story of Our Grandmothers by Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak, or even in the new adaptation of The Peasants by Władysław Reymont, directed by Hugh Welchman and Dorota Kobiela. The peasant and the bourgeois opposition remains a vivid and underexplored theme. The popularity of family sagas in Poland also remains strong — not only in popular women’s literature (Ałbena Grabowska, Małgorzata Gutowska-Adamczyk, Krystyna Mirek), but also in non-fiction prose and novels by authors such as Joanna Bator, Liliana Hermetz, and Beata Chomątowska.

Heritage in contemporary culture also includes the intangible inheritance of trauma and generational oppression (e.g., the so-called second and third post-war generations, multidirectional transfer of traumatic memory). Here, heritage is not merely a backdrop — it becomes the subject, the form, and the structure of the text. These narratives often combine individual and collective memories or uncover silenced histories (class-based, peasant, women's), and restore genealogies forgotten by dominant narratives.

The editors also welcome texts that analyze the “inheritance” of genre features in literary works (“family resemblance” in Ludwig’s Wittgenstein’s sense). Wittgenstein’s concept is useful for describing literary genres which — like “games” — resist strict definitions. Contemporary literature reveals a tendency to transform existing genres (saga, reportage, diary) in ways, assigning them new functions: emancipatory, documentary, commemorative. This approach makes it possible to:

  • perform tracing of the genealogy of literary forms (e.g., from romance to contemporary social novels),
  • explore genre blending and hybridization (e.g., essay-reportage),
  • analyze the inheritance of conventions, themes, and narrative structures.

We thus propose a reflection on genre studies, genealogy, and cultural heritage in the following dimensions:

  1. Genre studies — Generic heritage in literature, which contemporary literature adopts, transforms, or consciously challenges
  • How do contemporary literary texts inscribe themselves in traditional genres (e.g., family saga, realist novel, historical essay)?
  • In what ways do they reference past literary forms through intertextuality, pastiche, or deconstruction?
  • Can we speak of “family resemblances” between texts (in the Wittgensteinian sense), and how do they manifest?
  • How do popular forms (e.g., middlebrow literature) negotiate with literary ambition — and is there a “family resemblance” to high literature?
  1. Genealogy — Generational and identity-based heritage as a literary theme
  • How do contemporary women writers reconstruct family heritage as a form of feminine identity?
  • How does popular literature address the inheritance of historical trauma (the Holocaust, war, communism)?
  • How do contemporary literary texts explore identity in relation to class and social origin (e.g., peasantry vs. bourgeoisie)?
  • Does the family saga serve a therapeutic, emancipatory, or critical function?
  • How is the model of inheritance changing — from biological and name-based to emotional and narrative?

Submissions: zrl@uni.lodz.pl

! Due to the great interest in “free” issues, without a main topic, the Editorial Board has opened a Main Section, which means that in both issues per year there are published texts unrelated to the topics of the Issues, presenting current research results from disciplines of interest. Submissions are accepted on a continuous cycle — according to the order of submissions. Detailed information on text types can be found on the WWW.

Please send your submissions by email only! zrl@uni.lodz.pl