Irena Grudzińska-Gross

Irena Grudzińska-Gross (born 15 December 1946) is a Polish historian. After fleeing from her native Poland as a university student following the 1968 Polish political crisis, she obtained her PhD at Columbia University and became a professor at Emory University and Boston University, as well as a resident scholar at Remarque Institute and Princeton University. A 2018 Guggenheim Fellow in Intellectual and Cultural History, she has written historical books on modern Europe (particularly intellectual history and literature), including The Scar of Revolution, Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets (2009), and Golden Harvest (2011), the latter of which she co-wrote with her ex-husband Jan T. Gross.

Biography Irena Grudzińska was born on 15 December 1946, in Gdynia, Kashubia. She is the daughter of cardiologist and communist politician and the sister of banker . After entering the University of Warsaw in 1964, she spent some time in the Commandos dissident circle, and she was expelled from the in 1967. During this period she became associated with the so-called banana youth. After fleeing the country following the 1968 Polish political crisis, she continued her studies abroad at the Sapienza University of Rome. her doctoral dissertation is titled Journey Through Bookland: The Travel Memoir in the Nineteenth Century.

After spending a year as a visiting lecturer at Yale University, she joined Emory University as an assistant professor in 1984, before being promoted to associate professor in 1992. She was later an associate research scholar at Princeton University from 2008 until 2014, when she was promoted to research scholar.

As an academic, she specialises in intellectual history and literature in modern Europe. Her first book, The Scar of Revolution (1991), discusses Alexis de Tocqueville and Marquis de Custine. In 2009, she published another book, Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets discussing the relationship between Joseph Brodsky and Czesław Miłosz. She was editor of Peter Lang's Eastern European Culture, Politics and Societies series, and she also edited two of Adam Michnik's books, In Search of Lost Meaning (2011) and Trouble with History (2014). The book was praised for tackling a difficult topic; however the extent of the phenomenon in question was disputed, with some critics arguing that Gross exaggerated what was otherwise a marginal phenomenon.

In 1996, she was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, and in 2007 was promoted to Officer's Cross. In 2018, she was appointed a Guggenheim Fellow in Intellectual and Cultural History.

Personal life Grudzińska-Gross was the long-term partner of Jonathan Schell, and was married to Jan T. Gross.

Publications (ed. with Jan T. Gross) War Through Children's Eyes (1981) The Scar of Revolution (1991) Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets (2009) Golden Harvest (2011, with Jan T. Gross)