Department of the Social History of the 19th and 20th centuries
Head: Professor Włodzimierz Mędrzecki
Dr Natalia Jarska
Professor Anna Landau-Czajka
Dr Olga Linkiewicz
Professor Mateusz Rodak – Department Secretary
Professor Katarzyna Sierakowska
Cooperators:
Dr Andrii Bezsmertnyj
Dr Ewa Bukowska-Marczak
Dr hab. Karol Chylak
Dr Tomasz Flasiński
Dr Aleksandra Jakubczak
Dr Agnieszka Kajczyk
Dr Zachary Mazur
Professor Jan Molenda
Dr hab. Małgorzata Nalewajko
Kamila Radecka-Mikulicz, MA
Doc. Oleh Razyhrayev
Dr hab. Irena Anna Słodkowska
Zuzanna Żubka-Chmielewska, MA
Doctoral students:
Klaudia Ciszewska, MA (SD Anthropos)
The research work of the department is focused on the social history of Poland in the 19th and 20th century (with particular emphasis on the period from 1914 to 1939). In 2010–2013, together with numerous researchers from Poland and abroad, the members of the department were involved in the research project “The Society of the Second Republic of Poland”, which was funded by NCN and led by Professor Janusz Żarnowski and Professor Włodzimierz Mędrzecki. Carried out by eight research teams, the project produced a wide range of conferences and a collection of publications in the series “Metamorfozy Społeczne” devoted to various aspects of social life in interwar Poland, such as the culture of Polish society in that period, the underclass, religious issues, family and socialisation, work and the role of the state in Poland’s social structure. Aside from the publications, which appeared in such renowned journals as Acta Poloniae Historica (on ethnic issues) and Roczniki Dziejów Społecznych i Gospodarczych (on demography), the final result of the project is a new synthesis of the social history of the Second Republic entitled Społeczeństwo międzywojenne. Nowe spojrzenie edited by Professor Janusz Żarnowski and Professor Włodzimierz Mędrzecki (published in 2015).
Since 2014, the department has been carrying out the research project “The First World War on the Polish lands. Expectations – experiences – consequences”, funded by NPRH, which deals with the social history (in a broad sense) of the Polish lands during the First World War. The project leader is Professor Włodzimierz Mędrzecki, while the main co-investigators are Professor Andrzej Nowak and Professor Katarzyna Sierakowska.
Aside from being involved in the research activities of the department, all its members conduct their own original research projects with the use of various methodological approaches, including history, anthropology and sociology. The department consists of six full-time researchers, eight doctoral students and several collaborators.
The department also runs a doctoral seminar.
Members:
Professor Włodzimierz Mędrzecki – in his work, he focuses on the socio-cultural changes that occurred in Polish society in the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century and on the nation-forming processes on the lands of the First Republic of Poland. He is currently preparing a new synthesis of the society of the Second Republic, which intends to summarise the results of a several-year-long research project conducted by the department and a monograph devoted to the role of the intelligentsia in the socio-cultural life of the Second Republic.
Professor Anna Landau-Czajka – Polish–Jewish relations in the interwar period, social and women’s history, the history of the interwar Polish-Jewish press, with a particular emphasis on the image of Poland and Poles in the Polish-language Jewish press (a monograph on the subject is currently being prepared). Her recent research work has been focused on preparing a monograph devoted to the periodical Mały Przegląd.
Dr Natalia Jarska – her research interests include the history of women and gender in Poland in the 20th century. She is currently working on a monograph on the activities of women in the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) and the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) in 1945–1989. Her new project is devoted to the roles and gender relations within marriage in Poland between 1918 and 1989.
Dr Olga Linkiewicz studies the history of Eastern Europe in the 20th century, focusing in particular on social and ethnic relations and nationalism. Her ethnographic research deals with the memory of social life in interwar Poland and during World War II. Her new project involves a study of the beginnings of expertise in ethnology and racial anthropology, as well as of the relationship between the development of these disciplines and the policy of the Polish state in the years 1918–1939.
Professor Katarzyna Sierakowska – her research work concentrates on the reactions of Polish society to phenomena which increased in prominence during the First World War, namely death, displacement and famine. She is also interested in gender issues with regard to family history and the roles of women in the society of interwar Poland.
Professor Mateusz Rodak – his main area of interest is the underclass of the first half of the 20th century, which includes the history of particular underclass groups, crime prevention, social and criminal policy, criminology, the penitentiary system, marginalisation). Author of a monograph devoted to the reconstruction of the life of prisoners in the “Mokotów” Penal Prison in the years 1918–1939. He is currently working on a book on the criminals of interwar Warsaw.
Doctoral students:
Ms Monika Harchut – her dissertation is devoted to Professor Włodzimierz Kubijowicz and the Ukrainian Central Committee in the Chełm region. Working within the framework of the history of Central and Eastern Europe, and its social history in particular, she concentrates on demonstrating the role of the Ukrainian Central Committee in the Chełm region during World War II.
Ms Agnieszka Kajczyk – the topic of the dissertation is the Jewish film community in post-war Poland and its connections with various cultural and social institutions: “Film Polski” (the state-run film production and distribution organisation), the Central Committee of Jews in Poland, as well as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. In her work, she intends to reconstruct the history of the Jewish “Kinor” film studio, which produced films on Jewish topics, mainly in Yiddish, between 1946 and 1950, and to collect and analyse all the film materials produced by Jewish film-makers during the period in consideration.
Ms Halina Matviyenko is currently preparing the dissertation entitled: “The daily life of professors at the University of Lviv during the period of Galician autonomy”. The work includes a prosopographic analysis of a group of university professors in the period 1867–1914 and a study on the everyday life of the intellectual elite of Lviv at the time.
Ms Kamila Radecka Mikulicz – her monograph in preparation is devoted to the Jewish community of Chełm in the interwar period. Her work is based on statistical data, documents held in the archives of Lublin and Chełm, the local Jewish and Polish press, and post-war literature on the subject, as well as on the memorial books published by Chełm landsmanshaft and the American Jewish Yearbook.
Ms Zuzanna Żubka-Chmielewska – her research work is focused on clothing in the rural areas of interwar Poland. She intends to reconstruct the appearance of clothes (with the exception of folk costumes) from the interwar period, together with their elements and forms, and to provide an analysis of the social functions of clothing. The topics under discussion include the meanings attributed to elements of clothing, the choice of clothes depending on the occasion, the growing spread of urban fashion, and clothing as a way of self-presentation. The basic research material is photographs, which are analysed according to critical methods of visual anthropology. Another category of important and complementary source material for the study is interviews conducted in keeping with the anthropological approach, i.e. the theme of “oral history””, which has so far been underappreciated in research on the history of clothing.
RESEARCH PROJECTS OF THE DEPARTMENT:
1. “First World War on Polish Territories. Expectations – experience – consequences” (Professor Włodzimierz Mędrzecki, Professor Katarzyna Sierakowska, research grant carried out in 2014–2018, funded by NPRH).
2. “Women and men in marriage in Poland in 1939–1980” (Dr Natalia Jarska, research grant 2016–2019, funded by NCN).
3. “Ethnopolitics: Studies of Ethnicity and Race in Poland, Politics, and the International Circulation of Knowledge, 1918–1958” (Dr Olga Linkiewicz, research grant 2018–2021, funded by NCN, OPUS call).
List of completed research projects carried out by the Department:
1. “The society of the Second Republic of Poland” (Professor Janusz Żarnowski, Professor Włodzimierz Mędrzecki, research grant 2009–2013, funded by NCN).
2. “The Pariahs of the Second Polish Republic – the world of criminals in the Warsaw and Łódź voivodeships in the interwar period” (Professor Mateusz Rodak, research grant 2010–2013, funded by NCN).
3. “Bottom-up creation of culture. A cross-sectional comparative study” (Ms Ewa Nizińska, research grant 2013–2015, funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage).
4. “The political and economic elites of Bessarabia in the interwar period” (Mr Jakub Ber, research grant 2013–2015, funded by NCN).
