Agata Zarzycka

Agata Zarzycka is a Professor in the Department of American Literature and Culture at the University of Wrocław, specializing in identity constructions within popular culture. Her research critically examines video games, narrative role-playing games, and Gothic-inspired texts through frameworks of self-fashioning and posthumanism.

Her primary research domains include Horror Studies, Posthumanism and biopolitics, Theories of self-creation, Gothic theory and literature, Participatory culture and transmediality, and Subculture Studies. She investigates how identity concepts function across cultural texts and transmedia landscapes, with current work emphasizing biopolitical perspectives in Anthropocene-related discourse.

Dr. Zarzycka's publications reveal a consistent scholarly trajectory exploring identity in fantasy and gaming contexts. Her monographs demonstrate methodological rigor in analyzing narrative role-playing games through poststructuralist theory (2009) and Gothic subculture's role in identity formation (2019), highlighting intersections between participatory fan cultures and transmedia storytelling.

She teaches specialized courses including Theoretical Approaches to Characters in Narrative Role-Playing Games, Childhood and the Culture of Participation, and How to Study Fantasy: SF, Fantasy, and Horror in Literary and Cultural Criticism, contributing to critical understanding of American society through literary analysis.