Dr. Joanna M. Moszczynska joined the University of Regensburg (UR) in October 2020 as a postdoctoral researcher at CITAS. Since October 2022, she has been leading the DFG-funded project “Literary Journalism in the Cold War: Affective Structures of Transperipheral Solidarity in Thought-Images between Ryszard Kapuściński and Gabriel García Márquez” as part of a Walter Benjamin Fellowship. Initially, she was based at the Institute of Romance Studies (under the chair of Prof. Dr. Jochen Mecke), and since returning from parental leave in October 2024, she has been working at DIMAS under the professorship of Prof. Dr. Anne Brüske.
Her theoretical focus lies in decolonial critique and postcolonial theory, literary genre theory—particularly autofiction and crónica latinoamericana—as well as Gender, Memory and and TransArea Studies. Her research interests include memory cultures in Latin America, the Holocaust in Latin American literatures, Brazilian literature of the 20th and 21st centuries, cultural and intellectual entanglements between Latin America and Eastern Europe, and literary journalism from a comparative perspective.
In her current research project, she explores the aesthetic and socio-political entanglements between the works of Ryszard Kapuściński and Gabriel García Márquez in the context of the 20th-century conflict between the USA and the Soviet Union. García Márquez’s documentary narratives about Eastern Bloc countries and Kapuściński’s writings on Latin America convey ideas about socialism(s) and are embedded in the affective processing of experience through representations of socialist spaces and encounters with the Other.
By developing a philological and cultural studies approach to socialist affects, the research project focuses on narrative “thought-images” that are affectively attuned to lived historical moments. It aims to uncover specific affinities—whether thematic, structural, or genre-related—between the two authors, as they raise social and political questions relevant to the Cold War era. The project contributes to the transnational or entangled history of the intellectual left as well as to literary genre theory.
E-mail: [email protected]
CV
Academic positions
| Since Oct. 2024 | Research assistant at DIMAS, University of Regensburg, as part of the DFG's Walter Benjamin Program |
| Okt. 2022 – Sept. 2024 | Research assistant at the Institute of Romance Studies, University of Regensburg, as part of the DFG's Walter Benjamin Program (parental leave between January 2023 and March 2024 and May 2024 and September 2024) |
| Since Oct. 2022 | Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Romance Studies, University of Regensburg, funded through the DFG Walter Benjamin Programme |
| Mar. 2022 - Aug. 2022 | Junior Fellow at the MECILA - Maria Sibylla Merian Centre "Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America" (BMBF), São Paulo |
| October 2020-Feb2022 and Sept 2022 | Postdoc at the Centre for International and Transnational Area Studies (CITAS), University of Regensburg |
Academic Training
| Jan 2016 - May 2020 | Doctoral researcher in the field of Latin American Literatures and Cultures at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Dissertation: Memória da Destruição na literatura judaica-brasileira depois de 1985: Por uma literatura pós-Holocausto emergente. Supervisor: Prof. Dr Susanne Klengel and Junior Prof. Mariana Maia Simoni. Between Jan 2016 and Dec 2018: Member of the DFG-funded International Research Training Group Between Spaces at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin Research stays in Brazil (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro), Mexico (Mexico City) and Colombia (Leticia, AM). |
| Oct 2012 - Dec 2015 | M.A. in Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, Specialization: Brazil in the global context. Master thesis: "Memória do Holocausto e identidade judaica na autoficção judaico-brasileira: Diário da queda de Michel Laub e Antiterapias de Jacques Fux". Semester abroad at the Universidade de São Paulo. |
| Oct 2005 - June 2010 | M.A. in Luso-Brazilian Studies at the Iberian and Ibero-American Studies at the University of Warsaw. Master thesis: “Identidade e conditio humana nos contos de Milton Hatoum A cidade ilhada”. Year abroad at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. |
Research
- Memory Cultures in Latin American
- Holocaust in Latin American literature
- Brazilian literature of the 20th and 21st century
- Postcolonial theory and criticism
- Autofiction and Autobiography
- Literary Reportage and Travel Writing
Ongoing Research Projects
DFG-Project “Literary Journalism in the Cold War: Affective Structures of Transperipheral Solidarity in Thought-Images between Ryszard Kapuściński and Gabriel García Márquez”
The project explores the aesthetic and socio-politically oriented entanglements and resonances between the works of Ryszard Kapuściński and Gabriel García Márquez in the context of the Cold War. The project approaches the conflict from a transnational perspective, against the backdrop of significant political, cultural, social, and ideological developments in the Soviet Union’s satellite states as well as in the Global South. Both authors were witnesses of these global advancements and addressed them through literary-journalistic texts.
García Márquez’s documentary narratives about Eastern Bloc countries and Kapuściński’s writings on Latin America convey ideas about socialism(s) and are embedded in the affective processing of experience through representations of socialist spaces and encounters with the Other. By developing a philological and cultural studies approach to socialist emotions—drawing on Raymond Williams’ concept of “structures of feeling”—the research project focuses on narrative thought-images that are affectively attuned to lived historical moments. It aims to uncover specific affinities—whether thematic, structural, or genre-related—between the two authors, as they raise social and political questions relevant to the Cold War era.
From a perspective that foregrounds two regions, Eastern Europe and Latin America, the project contributes to the transnational or entangled history (histoire croisée) of the intellectual left, as well as to literary genre studies (including crónica, reportage, and literary journalism). It aligns with an interdisciplinary and transregional research agenda of DIMAS, whose methodological approaches in cultural and regional studies enable a comparative, transnational awareness and intercultural sensitivity indispensable in the examination of both aesthetic and formal developments in the hybrid field of literary journalism in the 20th century: a century marked by inequalities, violent politics, and idealistic hopes and disenchantments.
Awards and honours
2021 International Prize for Outstanding Dissertations of the European Brazilianist Association ABRE (ABRE 2021 Prize)
Publications
Monografie
A memória da Destruição na escrita judaico-brasileira depois de 1985. Por uma literatura pós-Holocausto emergente no Brasil. Berlin: Peter Lang 2022.
Wissenschaftliche Artikel (Auswahl)
„Täterbilder in der gegenwärtigen brasilianischen Literatur: ästhetische Antworten auf den Kitsch des Todes,“ in: Patrick Eser und Christian Ernst (eds.): Der Fall Eichmann transnational. pp. 329-346. Berlin: De Gruyter 2025.
„Fremde Körper, Migrationsgeschichten und kollektives Trauma im zeitgenössischen lusophonen Roman,“ in: Berit Callsen et al. (eds.): Transposition, Migration und KörperGrenzen in der Romania. pp. 129-144. Berlin: Peter Lang 2024.
“Clarice Lispector e a escritura do Desastre,” in: Lyslei Nascimento (eds.): Estudos Judaicos: Mulheres. Campinas: Mercado de Letras 2022.
“Mapeando los espacios afectivos de Europa del Este en la escritura de viajes de García Márquez,” in: Textos Híbridos 9, 2 (2022): 31-52. 10.15691/textoshibridos.v9i2.145
“Jewish Brazilian Post-Holocaust Fiction: The Body as a Source of Polymorphous Memory Discourse in Cíntia Moscovich’s Por que sou gorda, mamãe?,” in: Latin American Jewish Studies 1,1 (2022): 21-34.
“The acts of writing oneself into Jewishness in recent Jewish Brazilian literature on the example of Jacques Fux’s Antiterapias (2012): autofiction and identity after the Holocaust,” in: Journal of Jewish Identities 15, 1 (2022): 59-75.
“As porosidades do campo literário nacional: a emergência da literatura pós-Holocausto no Brasil/ The porosities of the national literary field: the emergence of post-Holocaust literature in Brazil,” in: Revista Odisséia 5 (2020): 85-105. doi.org/10.21680/1983-2435.2020v5nEspecialID23097 (external link, opens in a new window).
Editorships
Mit Hudzik, Agnieszka H., Jorge Estrada und Patricia A. Gwozdz (eds.): Elective Affinities. Rethinking Entanglements between Latin America and East-Central Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter 2024.
Mit Hernández Suárez, Diana Marisol, Luis Aguirre, Carolin Loysa und Brenda Margarita Macías Sánchez (eds.): Giros espacio-temporales: Repensando los entrelazamientos globales desde América Latina. Berlin: Tranvía 2019.
Further Publications
Beata Nowacka and Zygmunt Ziątek. Ryszard Kapusciński: Biography of a Writer, in: Slavic Review 1-2(2005). 10.1017/slr.2024.527
“From South-South Epistemologies to the Reflection on South-East Relations: putting on a decolonial lens,” in: Global Convivial Forum Blog von MECILA: Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America, 27, 20.01.2023.
mecila.net/en/27 (external link, opens in a new window).
“Postmemory: The Holocaust and its Effects on the Lives of Brazilian Jewry,” in: Global Convivial Forum Blog von MECILA: Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America, 18, 1.08.2022.
mecila.net/en/18 (external link, opens in a new window).
With Lopez Rico, Natalia und Horst Nitschack: “El Obvio Necesario Y El Papel De La Literatura: Entrevista a Michel Laub,” in: Revista de humanidades (Santiago. En línea), 45 (enero 25, 2022): 285–300.
doi.org/10.53382/issn.2452-445X.75 (external link, opens in a new window)
“Workshop Report: Migration, Mediality, Liminality,” in: Frictions (08.04.2021).
doi: 10.15457/frictions/0003.
Coming soon
“Ryszard Kapuściński, Latin America, and the Aesthetics of Experience,” in: Schwartz, Matthias/ Clemens Günther/ Susanne Frank (Hg.): The Red Globe: Writing the World in Eastern European Travel Literature of the Cold War. Berlin: De Gruyter 2026.
Teaching
Teaching
Winter Semester 2021/22
- The Shoah in Latin American Literature: Memory and Representation
- Forms and norms of coexistence in modern Latin American cronica
Summer Semester 2021
- Rethinking Area Studies and Space from the 'Global South'. Post/colonial perspectives and glocal challenges (CITAS lecture series)
- Journalism that reads like a novel: Literary Journalism and Reportage in 20th and 21st century Europe Across Cultures and Societies
Projects and Networking
Committee Work and Academic Functions
- Part of the scientific council of the journal Brésil(s) (CRBC-Mondes américains-EHESS)
- Part of the scientific council of the book series „Research in Latin American Jewish Studies“ (De Gruyter)
- Part of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal CROLAR, Critical Reviews on Latin American Research
- Part of the editorial board of the blog Frictions: Europe, America and the Global Transformations. Edited by Leibniz ScienceCampus Regensburg
Co-operations and Projects
Conference | Latin America and East-Central Europe: Comparisons, Bridges, Entanglements (+ volume)