Beginnings
The 5th Congress of the Polskie Towarzystwo Kulturoznawcze [Polish Association for Cultural Studies] took place between September 11 and 13 and was organized jointly this year by SWPS University and the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw. This year’s congress focused on the roles and tasks of the discipline in the times of a global polycrisis. IKP was represented at the congress by staff and doctoral students, who spoke about topics such as practical cultural studies (dr Zofia Dworakowska), contemporary searches for immortality (Kamil Aftyka, MA), and Western representations of non-Western scholarship (dr Matylda Szewczyk).
The beginning of the academic year is a period of inauguration – not only of teaching, but also of new directions of research and academic cooperations. The “Gender and Sexuality Studies in Local and International Perspectives” symposium, held on October 6, co-organized by the Institute of Polish Culture and the American Studies Center, marked the inauguration of the first year of the “Gender and Sexuality” master’s program at the University of Warsaw.
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Distinguished speakers – international guests, doctoral students, and University of Warsaw faculty members – discussed the contemporary state of the field, its potentials and challenges. During the Polish-language panel,panelists dr Ludmiła Janion, mgr Nadia Janiczak, dr hab. Dobrochna Kałwa, dr hab. Barbara Namysłowska, dr Konrad Sierzputowski and mgr Izabella Tyborowicz shared their individual paths to gender and sexuality studies and reflected on transnational collaborations and the internationalization of knowledge.
The event was also an opportunity for the inaugural faculty and student body to learn from the experiences of scholars involved in similar studies programs established at European institutions, such as the University of Copenhagen, Humboldt University, and the Central European University. In the second panel, dr Josef Šebek, dr Camilla Bruun Eriksen, dr Gabi Jähnert, dr Tereza Jiroutová Kynčlová, prof. Agnieszka Kościańska and prof. Andrea Pető shared their best practices regarding strategies for institutionalization, curriculum design, and the implementation of pedagogies of care.
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In the second week of October, researchers of social mobility representing various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences will convene at the IKP. Interdisciplinary Seminar on Researching Upward Mobility, organized by Magda Szcześniak and Justyna Szklarczyk, is financed by the Excellence Initiative – Research University program. The aim of the seminar is to reflect on existing and potentially productive methodological intersections in international research on social mobility. Invited guests represent renowned European academic centers and work on contemporary and historical processes of social mobility in Western and Central and Eastern Europe. Speakers include Paweł Bukowski (University College London / Institute of Economic Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences), Morgane Cadieu (Yale University), Sam Friedman (London School of Economics), Justyna Kajta (SWPS University), Jo Littler (Goldsmiths University of London), Alexander Mayer (Bundeswehr Universität Munich), Magda Szcześniak (IKP), Krzysztof Świrek (University of Warsaw), Marcin Wroński (SGH Warsaw School of Economics).
The seminar program can be found HERE. To register, please send an email to: upwardmobilityseminar@gmail.com.
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In November, prof. Marta Rakoczy and her team will invite you to the conference “(Un)written Rights of Children,” organized at the Museum of Warsaw. During the conference—the latest in a series of conferences on childhood—participants will reflect on the status of children as legislators. As the organizers write: “We are interested not only in children’s contribution to public order, as legalized by adults, and in various forms of youth self-determination (youth and children’s councils, school self-governments, participatory budgets, youth self-advocacy), but also in the forms and content used to educate and nurture children in a specific legal culture and specific ways of thinking about law, the rule of law, the common good, and justice.”
Applications are open until October 15. A full description of the conference’s objectives can be found at: https://muzeumwarszawy.pl/niepisane-prawa-dzieci-sprawczosc-prawna-mlodych/.
New publications
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In September, the MiroFor series of the słowo/obraz terytorium publishing house saw the release of Professor Igor Piotrowski’s long-awaited book O mapach widywanych gdzie indziej. Miron Białoszewski i przygody kartograficzne Polaków [On Maps Seen Elsewhere. Miron Białoszewski and the Cartographic Adventures of Poles]. The author examines Miron Białoszewski’s maps—those he saw, wrote about, and drew. Through looking ay the poet’s work, he identifies—firstly—key periods in the Polish history of map reception: the war and occupation, and the Stalinist era. Secondly, he problematizes those representations, which underwent the greatest transformations in the 20th century: maps of the cosmos and plans of rapidly developing cities. These case studies form the book’s central theme. Białoszewski emerges as a writer dismantling the concept of the contemporary map. Piotrowski contrasts him with other authors—including Witold Gombrowicz and Tadeusz Konwicki—who also, consciously or not, deconstruct the map. This allows him to recreate the broader cultural context of cartographic pragmatics and outline the spheres in which maps co-created the Polish imagination of the last century.
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The latest issue of the journal “State of Things”, edited by prof. Roman Chymkowski, prof. Włodzimierz Pessel and dr Agata Stasik (Leon Koźmiński Academy in Warsaw), is out! The issue, titled New Energy Regimes, illustrates how energy research reveals the strengths, limitations, and dilemmas of present-day social sciences and humanities, while also pointing towards new possible developmental trajectories in the coming years, exploring new ways of grasping stability and change, collaborating across domains and disciplines, and balancing rigor with engagement. The authors investigate such topics as wind farms in the Baltic Sea, grassroots energy transformations in Poland, cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and representations of alternative energy sources in interwar Polish science fiction. Highly recommended!
Summer conferences
During the summer, IKP fabulty presented their research at national and international conferences. On June 26-27, prof. Paweł Rodak, dr Piotr Kubkowski, and Justyna Szklarczyk, MA, represented the Institute’s Cultural History Section at the conference “Cultural History in Poland: Interdisciplinary Dialogue or the Search for Identity.” The event was hosted by the Institute of History of the University of Wrocław, and the conference provided one of the first opportunities for a broad, nationwide gathering of people identifying with the titular (sub)discipline. Justyna Szklarczyk presented her advanced doctoral work in the paper Collecting, Teaching, Inhabiting. A Contribution to the Cultural History of State-Owned Agricultural Farms, while Paweł Rodak and Piotr Kubkowski attempted a comprehensive presentation of the historical and cultural research conducted at IKP, its methodological assumptions, and a wide range of topics (joint presentation entitled Cultural Studies Categories of Cultural History: Practices, Experiences, Institutions).
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At the ninth annual Memory Studies Association conference, held in Prague in July, IKP was represented by dr Sara Herczyńska (title of presentation: Showing and Hiding the Difficult Past in Polish Historic House Museums), dr Paweł Dobrosielski (title of presentation: ‘I Survived the Nazis, I Will Survive the Rashists’: The Second World War and the Holocaust in the Current Ukrainian Discourse on the Ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War), and dr Łukasz Zaremba (title of presentation: Dialogic Remembering in the Scopic Field: Contemporary Artistic Interventions and the Visual Memory of Anti-Black Racism in Poland).