Robert Kusek, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture at the Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków. His research interests include life writing genres, the contemporary novel in English, poetics of memory and loss, as well as a comparative approach to literary studies. He is the author of two monographs, including Through the Looking Glass: Writers’ Memoirs at the Turn of the 21st Century (2017), and several dozen articles published in books, academic journals, and magazines, as well as co-editor of ten volumes of articles, most notably Travelling Texts: J.M. Coetzee and Other Writers (2014). He also works at the Research Institute of European Heritage at the International Cultural Centre in Kraków. Beata Piątek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Culture at the Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her academic interests include the influence of memory on identity, collective and cultural memory, and literature as an instrument of cultural memory with particular emphasis on the question of trauma and its representation in literature and culture. She is the author of History, Memory, Trauma in Contemporary British and Irish Fiction (2014) and articles on contemporary British and Irish literature and culture. She is also working in the areas of posthumanism and animal studies.Wojciech Szymański Wojciech Szymański is an Assistant Professor at the Department of the History of Modern Art and Culture at the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw. He is an independent curator and art critic; member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), author of the book Argonauci. Postminimalizm i sztuka po nowoczesności: Eva Hesse, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Derek Jarman [The Argonauts. Postminimalism and Art after Modernism: Eva Hesse, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Derek Jarman] (2015), and numerous academic and critical texts; curator of group and solo shows and art projects. His current research focuses on visual memory of the Great War. He is a member of CRUSEV (Cruising the 1970s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures) research team in the framework of HERA Grants.

• Robert Kusek, Beata Piątek, Wojciech Szymański - In the Wake of the EventPART ONE: After TraumaAnna Branach-Kallas - Discording After-Rites: Commemoration and Intimate Grief in British and French Fiction Published at the Great War’s CentenaryDagmara Drewniak - “It Is, After All, a Communication with Ghosts” : Correspondences by Anne Michaels and Bernice Eisenstein as a Historical and Personal Elegy in the Aftermath of the HolocaustEdyta Lorek-Jezińska - Memory of the Holocaust: Vicarious Trauma and Counter-Monuments in The Hideout by NeTTheatreMagdalena Zolkos - “After You Died I Could Not Hold a Funeral, and so My Life Became a Funeral”: Catastrophic Aftermaths in Han Kang’s Human ActsHéloïse Lecomte - “Phantom Growth”: Post-Traumatic Healing in Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time (1987) and Julian Farino’s T.V. Adaptation (2017)PART TWO: The End of the Wor(l)d and AfterMałgorzata Sugiera - After the Earth: New Postsingularity ScenariosKatarzyna Więckowska - The End of the World and AfterKrystian Piotrowski - Life, End of: Secular Eschatology in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out and Anna Kavan’s IceMantra Mukim - After Naming: Rilke’s Namenlos, Kant, and the Subject of AestheticsPART THREE: After ImagesDouglas Klahr - The Precursor to Virtual Reality Documents Architectural Hell: A Stereoscopic View of the Crematorium at DachauGrace Pundyk - The Promise of a Hospitable Memory: Encounters on the ThresholdAmanda Wasielewski - “We Have Decided Not to Decide”: The End of History and the Punk Politics of De ReageringKarolina Kolenda - After Nature: Landscape, Art, and Design in the Aftermath of Katrina and SandyGlenn Loughran - Evental Research… After the Future of WorkPART FOUR: Colonialism and Its AftermathClaudia Marquis - Colonialism and Its Aftermath in The Lord of the Rings: Postcolonial Reflections on Tolkien’s Imperial Fantasy Paulina Grzęda - The Entangled Temporality of the Postcolony: Zakes Mda and the “Chaffing Temporalities” of Post-Apartheid María Concepción Brito Vera, María Luz González Rodríguez - Life Out of Balance and Its Aftermath. Paradoxes in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: A Material Ecocritical ReadingPART FIVE: “(Un)Catastrophic” AftermathsMarie-Anne Hansen-Pauly - Language and Disaster: “The Gulf (Between You and Me)” by Pierre JorisBarbara Klonowska - The Aftermath of Love: Michael Haneke’s AmourChristina Schönberger-Stepien - Rushdie’s Rebellious Joseph Anton: Chronicling the Aftermath of The Satanic VersesMichaela Beck - The Post-Postmodern Afterlife of the American Novel: “Resurrecting” the Novel-as-Archive in Anne Valente’s Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down (2016) and Ed Park’s Personal Days (2008)Tomasz Fisiak - Grande Dame Guignol and the Notion of the Aftermath: A Case Study of Robert Aldrich’s Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)Author indexAbout the authors