Tamara Trojanowska
Vice-Dean, Faculty & Academic Life
Associate Professor, Slavic & East European Languages & Cultures
Contact
Email: vicedeanacademic.artsci@utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-978-7897
Executive Assistant: Christine Yarish
Office: SS2005, Office of the Dean, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street
Portfolio
The Vice-Dean, Faculty & Academic Life (VDFAL) works with various partners within the Faculty to provide advice and support to Chairs, Academic Directors and Principals to manage the human and financial resources that sustain the Faculty’s academic programs. The VDFAL supports academic searches, appointments and reviews. The Vice-Dean also acts on behalf of the Faculty in managing collective agreements, bargaining and grievances with trade unions and the faculty association within the University.
Areas of Responsibility
- Professional development for faculty members
- Training and support of academic leaders in divisional processes (including onboarding new leaders, participating in training for leaders throughout the HR cycle)
- Collective agreements, divisional lead
- Labour relations, divisional lead
- Faculty issues, including critical issues
Biography
Tamara Trojanowska received an MA in theatre studies from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and a PhD from the Drama Centre at the University of Toronto. Upon graduation, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures at the University of Chicago, returning to U of T as an Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic & East European Languages & Cultures in 1998. She has directed the Polish Language & Literature Program within the department, markedly strengthening its profile and presence in North America.
While serving as Director of the University College Drama Program from 2008 to 2012, she integrated her unit with the graduate program at the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies. From 2017–21, she served as Director of the Centre where she co-founded the BMO Lab in Creative Research in the Arts, Performance, Emerging Technologies and AI.
Her current research focuses on the transgressive intersections of drama and theatre with history, philosophy and religious imagination, with particular investment in the issues of identity. She has published on these topics in Poland, Canada, the United States and England.
Her latest book publication, co-edited with Joanna Niżyńska and Przemysław Czapliński, is entitled Being Poland: A New History of Polish Literature and Culture Since 1918 (University of Toronto Press, 2018.) The book presents over sixty essays by scholars from Europe and North America and includes Trojanowska’s extensive analysis of transgressive practices in Polish drama and theatre.
She has also recently contributed essays on this subject to Theatermachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context (Northwestern University Press, 2020) and Światowa historia literatury polskiej: Interpretacje (World History of Polish Literature: Interpretations, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2020). Her investigations of the sacred in modern drama resulted in a new selection and extensive reinterpretation of the plays of Roman Brandstaetter (IBL, 2015).