American Book Club, June 2025

05 06 2025

On 23 June, the next meeting of the American Club will take place – a series of meetings organised by the American Studies Center at the UW and Czarne Publishing House.

Why have all bars suddenly become protein bars and rolls gluten-free? Do you really have to run marathons, eliminate carbohydrates and meditate every day to feel better? Or maybe we live in a culture where well-being is already a compulsion?

During the second meeting of the American Club, we will discuss Rina Raphael’s „Ewangelii wellnessu” (“The Gospel of Wellness”, translated by Hanna Pasierska). Dr Natalia Pamuła and Dr Jędrzej Burszta from the Centre for American Studies at the University of Warsaw will take part in the discussion about the book.

When? 23 June at 6 p.m.
Where? Czarnego Bookshop, al. Jana Pawła II 45A, corner of Nowolipki

In “The Gospel of Wellness” by Rina Raphael reveals the mechanisms behind the giant industry associated with healthy lifestyles, which has become a kind of new secular religion for millions of people. Wellness promises us solace in a world of mounting crises, where chronic stress, excessive workloads and fear of the future leave us desperately seeking peace and balance. Self-care becomes yet another obligation on the to-do list, and well-being becomes an obsession.

For years, Rina Raphael wrote a column on healthy living in a magazine for businesspeople. In her book, she presents the expansion of wellness as a symptom of systemic neglect and a lack of trust in medicine, but she also asks more universal questions: what is fulfilment, a sense of belonging to a community, or happiness in today’s culture?

Natalia Pamuła – culturologist, assistant professor at the Centre for American Studies at the University of Warsaw. Researcher in disability studies and gender studies, author of numerous texts on disability in Polish culture and history. Her book, Disability Disruptions: Family, Gender, and Society in Post-1989 Poland, will be published in 2026 by Illinois University Press. Her new research project concerns the cultural history of neurosis in the People’s Republic of Poland.

Jędrzej Burszta – culturologist, ethnographer, assistant professor at the Centre for American Studies at the University of Warsaw. In 2019, he obtained a PhD in culturology at the SWPS University in Warsaw on the basis of a dissertation on the queer history of American science fiction literature. His research interests include American popular and alternative culture, speculative fiction, retrofuturism, queer studies, and the ethnography of memory. He is currently the project manager of “Psychedelic Culture in Poland: Practices and Discourses (2024–2026)”.

The American Club, organised in cooperation with the American Studies Centre at the University of Warsaw and Czarne Publishing House, is a series of meetings devoted to fiction and non-fiction books that provide a better understanding of the social, political and cultural processes taking place in the United States.

Free entry.

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