Where: The University of Illinois at Chicago, The Chopin Theater in Chicago
When: April 24-25, 2017
Organizers: Professor Michał Paweł Markowski (Hejna Family Chair in Polish Language and Literature) & Professor Keely Stauter-Halsted (Hejna Family Chair in the History of Poland)
Poland has long been the focus of modernization theories, schemes, and projects. From Enlightenment travellers critiquing the Polish lands for their backwardness and incivility to communist ideologues intent on the revolutionary transformation of society, Poles have been engaged in conversations about modernization for most of the past two centuries.
Modernization—the notion of a transformation from a traditional, rural, agrarian society to a secular, urban, and industrial one—has recently experienced a decline in reputation. Until 1918 modernization programs helped move the nation forward while the political existence of the state was denied, often pitting intellectual and economic agendas against nationalist ideologies supported by the Church. After independence, modernization goals drove the Second Republic to fight decades of underdevelopment in order to keep pace with liberal democracies across Europe. Later, modernization became a buzzword for the Communists, justifying grandiose social engineering projects. More recently, the integration of Poland and the Poles into the European Union has brought economic benefit, but social dislocation and insecurity, providing fodder for debates about the value of modernization. In all of these cases, modernization has been skillfully manipulated as an ideological weapon in battles over power, influence, and the control of public opinion. The massive political turnout and populist movements currently taking power worldwide suggest a reversal in the way ideas of modernization have resonated. In Poland, some have suggested that the rise of the Law and Justice party in 2015 came about through the Party’s explicit resistance to modernization, especially as it had been employed in Civic Platform’s neoliberal economic programs.
What have all these versions of modernization meant to Poland and to Poles? How can we as scholars understand the ways modernization schemes have affected Polish society? The centrality of modernization tropes in Modern Polish history demands careful investigation. We invite proposals for presentations to consider different accounts of how modernization has been used in the last 150 years and to look closer at how its enthusiasts and its detractors continue fighting one another, even while claiming to share a concern for a better future of the Polish nation.
Suggested topics include:
· Polish backwardness and its discontents
· modernization as a political tool
· campaigns for social mobility, human movement, or the erasure of social boundaries in the name of modernization
· representation of modernization in the visual arts
· modernization as a literary trope
· modernization as an intellectual challenge
· European and American models of modernization in Polish context
· modernization in religious practices
· modernization as an aspect of shifting gender roles
· the relationship of the Catholic Church toward modernization
· Jewish modernization projects
· programs for economic modernization and their impact
· pedagogical or curricular modernization schemes
· the role of modernization in approaches to childhood
· generational tensions in modernization campaigns
· mass movements as modernizing or backwards looking
The conference is a part of a broader series of Polish Studies meetings at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As such, the organizers are interested in examinations of Central Europe in comparative perspective, including Austrian, Czech, German, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrainian, and/or Jewish cultures, whose development was once in the orbit of Polish culture. Organizers welcome papers written from different perspectives, using different methods and media.
The conference will take place in Chicago at the Chopin Theater, Monday, April 24 and Tuesday, April 25, 2017. Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words by February 10, 2017. Participants will be notified of our decision by March 1, 2017.
Presenters are asked to secure their own travel expenses as well as accommodations. We will be happy to recommend hotels in the area.
The conference registration fee is $50 for participants ($25 for graduate students), payable on-line, once the conference website is available and registration is open.
Please send all inquiries and proposals to Anna Szawara, at [email protected]. In the subject of your e-mail please include your last name, university affiliation and conference mention (e.g. SMITH, Northwestern, Abstract for Modernizations). (UIC, Hejna Family Chair in Polish Language and Literature)
Alicja Otap
