Prof. Christopher Garbowski

CHRISTOPHER GARBOWSKI, PhD, Professor Emeritus UMCS

e-mail: christopher.garbowski@mail.umcs.pl   

Christopher Garbowski is professor emeritus at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland. He has been primarily interested in values and religion in literature and popular culture and is the author and co-editor of a number of books. He is also on the editorial board of Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe and formerly a book review editor at The Polish Review.

Professional career:

1. from 2005                            Associate Professor, Department of English, UMCS
2. 1996 - 2005                          Assistant Professor, Department of English, UMCS
3. 1992 - 1996                          Teaching Assistant, Department of English, UMCS

Awards:

2019 Ludwik Krzyzanowski Polish Review award, Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America

Select conferences and guest lectures:

1. Paper entitled: “It's a Wonderful Life: Frank Capra's Divine Comedy" – at the American Academy of Religion conference, Maritime Region, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Massachussets, April 16, 1999
2. Paper entitled: “Tolkien's Cosmic Eucatastrophe: from Ragnarok to Joyous Subcreation" – at the Oxford Millennium Conference, Oxford University, April 10-13, 2000
3. Guest lecture: “Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue” 25 marca 2007 r. w Gasson Honors Library, Boston College, w Chestnut Hill, Massachussetts, organized by the Boston College Honors Program.
4. Organized panel entitled: “Challenges facing the Catholic Church and Religion in Polish society” at the 70^th Annual Meeting of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America in Boston, September 7-8, 2012.
5. Organized panel entitled: “Lublin and Problems of Urban Historical Memory” at the Sixth World Congress on Polish Studies, Kraków, June 16-18, 2017
6. Invited to participate in the panel entitled: “From Solidarity forward: The tangled web of religion, politics and freedom of belief in Eastern Europe,” sponsored by the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) in Warsaw, June 13, 2019.
7. Guest lecture: “Popular Sovereignty: The Question of Municipal Rights in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and of the Nation-State in the EU” at the symposium “From the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the European Union,” Polish Academy of Sciences Scientific Center in Vienna, December 14, 2019.

Organization of conferences:

Co-organizer of the conference: “Catholic Traditions in History, Literature and Philosophy,” organized  by the Catholic University of Lublin and the University of Notre Dame Erasmus Institute in Lublin, September 16-18, 2004.

Membership in academic associations:

Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, former co-editor of book reviews for The Polish Review

Selected publications:

Books

1. Truth, Beauty, and the Common Good: The Search for Meaning through Culture, Community, and Life. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021.
2. 12.     Cinematic Echoes of Covenants Past and Present: National Identity in the Historical Films of Steven Spielberg and Andrzej Wajda. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018.
3. Lublin: A History. Lublin: Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Press, 2018.
4. Religious Life in Poland: History, Diversity and Modern Issues. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014.
5. Pursuits of Happiness: The American Dream, Civil Society, Religion and Popular Culture. Lublin: University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska Press, 2008.
6. Recovery and Transcendence for the Contemporary Mythmaker: The Spiritual Dimension in the Works of JRR Tolkien. Lublin: Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Press, 2000.
7. Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ‘Decalogue Series’: The Problem of the Protagonists and Their Self-Transcendence. Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs, 1996. Distributed by Columbia University Press.

 Articles or chapters

1. “The Ukrainian War: A View from a NATO Eastern Flank Country,” The Polish Review 68, no. 3 (2023): 55-69.
2. "Catholicism in the New Poland: A Religion and Society in Transition," Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 40, no. 5, Article 6 (2020). https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol40/iss5/6.
3. “The Polish Debate on the House of European History in Brussels,” The Polish Review 65, no. 4 (2020): 60-70.
4. “The City as a Lieu de Memoire: Phenomenological, Symbolic, and Self-Reflexive Levels of the Past in Lublin’s Present,” The Polish Review 63, no. 3 (2018): 35-48.
5. “The Glorious Dead and Sacred Communities in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Wajda’s Katyń,” Religion and the Arts 18, 3 (2014): 373-98.
6. "Evil." In A Companion to J. R.R. Tolkien, edited by Stuart Lee, 418-30. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
7. “The Comedy of Enchantment in The Lord of the Rings,” Christianity and Literature 60, no 2 (2011): 267-80.
8. “Community and Comedy in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 10, 3 (2007): 34-47.
9. "The Modernity of Henry James and Agnieszka Holland’s Washington Square.” American Studies 22 (2005): 123-30.
10. "The Catholic Imagination in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz.” Journal of Religion and Film 5, 2 (2001): web.
11. “Tolkien's Cosmic Eucatastrophe,”  Inklings-Jahrbuch  für Literatur und Ästhetic 18 (2000):  272-89.
12. “Double Lives and Lucid Dreams: Two Takes on Kieślowski,” The Polish Review 45, no 3 (2000): 365-72.

Essays in a major online non-academic journal

1. “Cosmopolitan Europe or a Europe of Nations?” Voegelin View, April 2, 2023.
2. “The Long Road to Ukraine,” Voegelin View, February 14, 2023.  
3. “Community and Rituals: A Review of Byung-Chal Han’s The Disappearance of Rituals,” Voegelin View, January 22.

Translation:

Jerzy Kłoczowski, East Central Europe in the Historiography of the Region. Institute of East Central Europe, Lublin 1995.

In preparation:

Monograph: The Problem of Moral Rearmament: Poland, the European Union, and the War in Ukraine, to be published by Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene Oregon

Prepared by: Christopher Garbowski