{"id":1787,"date":"2021-05-25T08:00:11","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T06:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/?p=1787"},"modified":"2021-05-21T12:11:39","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T10:11:39","slug":"agnieszka-beyond-the-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/2021\/05\/agnieszka-beyond-the-screen\/","title":{"rendered":"Agnieszka Beyond the Screen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a9 Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet<\/span><\/h2>\n

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Authors: <\/strong>Timon Musy, Katharina Schwarck<\/p>\n

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Earlier this semester, Agnieszka kindly accepted to sit down with us over Zoom: the perfect occasion to get to know the person she is beyond the screen!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Hello, Agnieszka. Welcome. Thank you for sitting down with us!<\/b><\/p>\n

You have been at UNIL for fifteen years, is that right?<\/b><\/p>\n

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I guess so! I hadn’t thought of that, but you\u2019re right. This year it will be fifteen years.<\/span><\/p>\n

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So, who are you? Where are you from? Where have you worked? What are you currently working on?<\/b><\/p>\n

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I come from several different places, which currently makes me a person with three nationalities: I am Polish, American, and Swiss. I was born in Poland, I grew up in California and had most of my education there. Then I spent twelve years in Geneva before coming to Lausanne. I\u2019ve been here for fifteen years now, that\u2019s true! I sort of lost my sense of time, partly because I\u2019ve just enjoyed being here, in Lausanne, so much. I think it\u2019s a really great department and it\u2019s allowed me to have a lot of freedom in terms of what I teach and what I research, and really to blossom in a lot of ways, intellectually. So, I have very much enjoyed being at Lausanne and I look forward to being here until I retire in about another thirteen years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Well, the other thing I am – I should mention this : I\u2019m a really different person than when I first arrived. I had a huge thing happen to me three years ago: my son died. He was about to start the university. He was going to be at the faculty, like you guys, maybe even in the same year. So, that has completely changed me and remapped my world. It maybe doesn\u2019t look like it so much from the outside because I\u2019m still working and doing the same things, but I think that on the inside I\u2019m very different and I\u2019m doing those things differently and they mean different things to me. It\u2019s certainly made me put a lot more of myself into my teaching. The fact that my son would have been at the faculty… It\u2019s a huge sadness of mine, that he never actually made it to the university. But it makes me see the students that I\u2019m teaching as reflections of what he could have been here, and what I would want to give them maybe flows a little bit from what I would have wanted him to find here.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In terms of my <\/span>parcours<\/span><\/i> and major research projects: I\u2019ve always been interested in the relationship between society and literature and how social issues can be engaged with in literature, how they filter into literature and what literature can do to think about important political and social issues. My first book was about the nineteenth century gothic and how major writers like Melville, Hawthorne, Poe, and Henry James used the gothic in various rich and subtle ways to engage with the huge issues of their time like slavery, class, gender, and capitalism. The gothic is a strain of my research that is still there. I\u2019m working on several essays even right now.<\/span><\/p>\n

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My second book was even closer to home, as an Americanist: it was about war and how we tell stories about war through popular culture. The United States is a very militaristic country, but it has not won a war since 1945, and even then, arguably, it won the war only because of the Soviet Army on the Eastern front. It may not have been able to win all by itself, and the fact that it dropped these two terrible bombs on civilians in Japan shows that it has not won a war because of great or effective fighting, – whatever that would even be – which I don\u2019t believe in, in the last seventy years. It\u2019s been engaged in one destructive war after another, killing people abroad, killing Americans, destroying economies. And yet, America continues to think of war as a worthwhile endeavour, as a glorious, important test of a people, and of individuals<\/span>, <\/span>and of a country. I think that a lot of that work of persuasion to see things in that way is being done through Hollywood, and through popular culture. That\u2019s what my last book was about, about looking at how the formulas that are used for that come from literature more generally and have a long history, like melodrama, or adventure, that are used to make war seem exciting and meaningful. That book just came out a couple of months ago, I\u2019m still in the process of promoting it and getting reviews and so on. It took me a long time to write it because I was interrupted by being Head of Department, and then I stopped working really effectively for a couple of years after my son passed away. So, it took me about six years to write that book.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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My next project is going to be about ecology, the environment and the planet, in some way or another. I\u2019m not quite sure what the corpus is going to be, or what the research question is going to be, but that\u2019s where I\u2019m headed for the next book.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Congratulations on your book! And we are very excited about your new project.<\/b><\/p>\n

We are currently going through hard times and we wanted to know how teaching online has been for you.<\/b><\/p>\n

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That\u2019s a great question. I have to say, personally, I had to adapt and learn how to do it very quickly but I have not found it to be as disruptive as I think it probably is for students. I really feel for how lonely it is for students to be alone at home all the time. That\u2019s really not what university is about. University is not just learning, it\u2019s also the whole social environment, it\u2019s making friends, it\u2019s changing and becoming a different person in those three or five years. You can\u2019t do that alone in your room. You really have to do that as a part of a class that you\u2019re going through, with your <\/span>vol\u00e9e<\/span><\/i>, as part of an environment and all the different things that are impacting you. That\u2019s been a tragedy for students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, as a teacher, I have found it to be not so bad! I actually enjoy being able to see people\u2019s names and faces up close and I find that the break-out rooms work really well, I find that using the chat as a support while I\u2019m talking to the class has been very helpful. I\u2019ve found that I\u2019ve had to prepare more and be more engaged in my classes, while the students seem to be as well, so it\u2019s more intense and tiring, but sometimes I feel like it\u2019s better teaching in terms of some of the discussions and interactions, especially since my classes in the last few years have gotten really big. There are sometimes forty or more students, and it\u2019s very easy for forty people to just become really passive, whereas when you\u2019re on a screen, you\u2019re very visible with your face. I try to discourage having your video off, because then I don\u2019t even know if somebody\u2019s there or not! It\u2019s sometimes easier to get shyer people to talk. The dynamic has been different. I find that it hasn\u2019t been necessarily detrimental to teaching. I certainly enjoy being safe: I\u2019ve appreciated the fact that I don\u2019t have to worry about catching COVID in the classroom or wearing a mask while I speak and I can just focus on teaching. I also appreciate the extra time it\u2019s given me, you know, the time I would spend showering, getting dressed, commuting. I have more time to read, to take walks, to be with my daughter or my partner. That\u2019s been the good side of teaching online, but I do recognise that for students it\u2019s been very difficult overall.<\/span><\/p>\n

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What is the favourite class you have ever given?<\/b><\/p>\n

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There\u2019s different kinds of favourite classes. *<\/span>She laughs<\/span><\/i>* I love teaching the master\u2019s class in \u201cNew American Studies\u201d because I put a lot of my intellectual history and engagement into that class. I can see how, when students learn some of the things, and they get these tools, I see them going off and writing master\u2019s papers or m\u00e9moires and it\u2019s very exciting to see them taking things that I\u2019ve brought to them but then running with it and doing things I hadn\u2019t even thought of. So, I\u2019d say that the recurrent annual master\u2019s class I teach in \u201cAmerican Studies\u201d is probably the most fun and exciting regular class that I teach.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Then there are more occasional classes that I thought to have been very interesting. I taught a class on feminism once with Isis Giraldo, when she was still here. That was a class that felt really\u2026 dangerous to teach. I remember getting nervous, my heart beating, before going in. We were giving students texts to read from the 1960s and the 1970s that were extremely critical of male writers and patriarchal structures. I just never knew how students would react and I\u2019d get scared, almost, before class, going \u201coh my god, what am I doing?\u201d. And then a student told me once, when I said this, \u201cyou know, I do too! I get scared the night before class, I\u2019m really nervous\u201d. But it feels like there\u2019s something really important going on, but something dangerous, that really affects people personally a lot and makes them question their entire way of being in the world. So, I don\u2019t know if that is my favourite class but it is definitely one I will never forget and that was very important to teach.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Since you\u2019ve been around Lausanne for quite a while, how have you been liking it? Is there a place in the region that you really like, and that you\u2019d want us to go to and see?<\/b><\/p>\n

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Well, I do love being here, especially for the department, I have to say. It is really the most collegial, friendly,\u00a0 open department I\u2019ve ever been in, and I have been in various universities and various departments. I love the students, they\u2019re curious and eager to learn. I have never had a discipline problem in all these years of teaching, I mean\u2026 maybe people whispering a little bit too much in the Anglo-American literary survey sometimes, but that\u2019s the worst of it, and I know people who teach in high school who tell me horrible stories. So I feel very lucky in terms of students and how much extra work they do, all the extra-curricular activities they do, like MUSE! It\u2019s just amazing how people get so involved or are so excited about language, and literature and the community that we have. I love the department for all those reasons, and the region is beautiful.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But, I grew up in California right along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, and I have to say that I really miss the ocean, I miss the beach and I miss the horizon. I miss the fact that you could go to the beach when you\u2019re sad or on a winter day and just look into infinity. When I first moved to Switzerland I felt very hemmed in\u00a0 by the mountains. Now it has been twenty-five years since I live in Switzerland – I came in ninety-four – and I have learned to love the mountains and to love the lake. We\u2019re really privileged in terms of the natural environment. I have a little forest right near my house, and I talked with a park ranger once who told me that eighty-five percent of the Swiss population has a forest within ten minutes walking distance from their home. That\u2019s really nice.<\/span><\/p>\n

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One of my favorite places is a walk in Crissier called the \u201cSentier de la Cascade\u201d. I go there several times a year and it\u2019s always different because of all the different colours; in winter there is more light, in summer it is more green and cool, and it\u2019s just a beautiful walk along a river that goes to a waterfall. That\u2019s my favorite place within a ten-miles radius.<\/span><\/p>\n

[Note from the interviewee: Since we had the interview I have discovered the Venoge and the walk alongside it between St. Sulpice and Bussigny and this has definitely become my other favorite place along with the Cascade walk!]<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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What is your favorite book of all time ?<\/b><\/p>\n

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That\u2019s a tough question. That\u2019s a cruel question. *<\/span>She laughs and pauses<\/span><\/i>* Well, a book that I come back to as a teacher, my favorite book that I teach over and over again is <\/span>Beloved <\/span><\/i>by Toni Morrison. But my favorite book of all time\u2026 I can\u2019t give you a single book but there is an author that I love reading and re-reading, and that\u2019s Louise Erdrich. She is a Native American writer and I never get tired of her books, and whether I read it for the first time or for the fifth time I always find so many new answers and richness. I also find her vision of the world so balanced between the gritty and difficult, the luminous and quirky, the sexual and witty, and it is just such an interesting mix of everything that I find inspiring. So I would say that any book by Louise Erdrich would be one of my favorite books.<\/span><\/p>\n

[Note from the interviewee: In rereading this interview I thought of several more that have profoundly marked me and I\u2019d like to mention them: Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s <\/span><\/i>Slaughterhouse Five, <\/span>Nancy Huston\u2019s <\/span><\/i>Dolce Agonia<\/span>, Zora Neale Hurston\u2019s <\/span><\/i>Their Eyes Were Watching God, <\/span>and Tim Robbins\u2019 <\/span><\/i>Jitterbug Perfume.]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Is there a piece of advice you were given that you think is very important and that you would like to share ?<\/b><\/p>\n

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I don\u2019t remember getting a lot of advice when I was younger. Maybe I should have gotten more! The one thing that really stands out of my mind is something my mom told me. She was a dentist – my family comes from Poland – and under the communist regime women were encouraged to get higher education and a lot of women were able to get into good skilled professions. So my mom said to me – she said this when I was quite young – that the most important thing in life for a woman is to be financially independent, to never depend on a man for your livelihood, as it always makes the relationship totally skewed. So you have to be free and independent, to be able to enter any relationship with your full free-will and to stay independent within it so that you can leave if you have to. That was a piece of advice that I took to heart and I continue to find very relevant when I look around the world and I see the situation of women in general. Around the planet most women are in various degrees of servitude and a lot of it has to do with not being able to be financially independent and make their own choices.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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What do you think would be the most surprising scientific discovery imaginable ?<\/b><\/p>\n

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Parallel universes. I\u2019m very interested in physics and all the wonky, weird stuff that goes on, contemporary physics looking at dark matter that makes up ninety-five percent of the universe, and the weird ways subatomic particles behave, the way they get paired and then they start to behave in a way that is talked about in <\/span>Only Lovers Left Alive<\/span><\/i> as \u201cspooky action\u201c, which is the way time and space get folded into one another\u2026 Just all the magical stuff that seems completely surreal, that physics is about. So if there was some kind of definitive proof of parallel universes or other dimensions or that time is just an illusion, that would be pretty surprising!<\/span><\/p>\n

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If you could add anyone on Mount Rushmore, who would it be and why ?<\/b><\/p>\n

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First of all, I think it needs a woman up there and I\u2019d say it\u2019s about time that people of color in the United States start to get some celebration and recognition. So, I guess I would put up Harriet Tubman. She was the runaway, the escaped slave who helped other slaves to escape along the \u201cUnderground Railroad\u201d. She\u2019s being put on the twenty dollars bill hopefully soon, but I could definitely see her mixing things up on Mount Rushmore.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Have you ever tasted the Migros Ice Tea and what do you think of it ?<\/b><\/p>\n

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\u00a0*<\/span>She laughs<\/span><\/i>* I don\u2019t really drink ice tea anymore because it\u2019s too sweet, but I have tasted Migros Ice Tea and I agree that it\u2019s probably the best in the world (although I wish they would make an unsweetened version of it).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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