Complicating the Female Subject

"This is a daring and thought-provoking book for all theater lovers. Joann Kot's comprehensive study revives archival theater scripts and forgotten plays of Poland's inter-war "women's drama" in a way that energizes and delights. Reading her analysis makes us rethink the mechanisms of theater and the structures of domination at the same time. This ostensibly modest rediscovery, conducted in a bi-lingual format proposed by Kot, also reveals the rich suppressed heritage behind Polish women's voices today asserting clearly that the country's national stage history needs to be seen anew, in a brighter and fuller light." -- Elwira M. Grossman (University of Glasgow)
Complicating the Female Subject serves as an important introduction to dramatic works written by women during the twenty-year period in which Poland regained independence, bringing to light largely ignored material, and will certainly be of interest to specialists of Polish drama and inter-war culture. -- Diana Sacilowski * The Polish Review *
Joanna Kot’s book is a superb cross-reference to the literary history of Polish women, and by delivering this first systematic scrutiny of Polish women’s drama this book becomes an important addition to the debate on women’s issues. ... Joanna Kot’s book is a thought-provoking elaboration on Polish interwar dramatic execution of women’s questions and it will be a valuable source of knowledge for further investigation. This is a timely book, which discusses the mechanisms of women’s presence—and the very strategies for the silencing of women’s voices by critical reception—as both writers and the characters in literary works. -- Urszula Chowaniec * Slavic Review *
“In Complicating the Female Subject: Gender, National Myths, and Genre in Polish Women’s Inter-War Drama, Joanna Kot works to broaden the landscape of interwar Polish literature and to consider how women playwrights worked in and against the conventions of their time to complicate the female subject. … Kot’s work, rooted in literary theory and contextualized culturally and historically, offers a thought-provoking introduction to women playwrights engaged in the project of defining their role within a rapidly changing Poland. … As Poland continues to grapple with the role of women in society, Complicating the Female Subject introduces us to a group of women who 'shared faith in the possibility' of improvement.” —Alena Gray Aniskiewicz, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Women East-West