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In Polish historiography, geohistory is not part of the research mainstream. This discipline is still on the periphery of interest for Polish historians, although there are signs of change. These include a peer-reviewed volume of studies edited by Tomasz Kargol. It is the result of the work of the ‘Seminar on the Geohistory of Galicia (1772–1918)’ Research Platform, an international and interdisciplinary research team established in at the Institute of History of the Jagiellonian University in cooperation with the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management of the Jagiellonian University and the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv. The team brought together not only seasoned researchers of many nationalities, but also representatives of various academic disciplines, to highlight the participation of representatives of the geographical sciences. In view of the research profile outlined, it could not be otherwise.
Edited by T. Kargol, this collection of studies is an important and necessary publication. It fills an important gap in Polish historiography. The volume under review points to a multi-layered view of historical processes, which is its great strength. This is, after all, what geohistory proposes. The importance of geography has so far been emphasised extremely strongly in military history, the history of trade, and in works on geographical discoveries. This publication points to hitherto unexplored deposits of sources and opportunities that allow for new research on the grounds of Galicia.
The work, therefore, not only presents examples of research areas where the methods used by geohistory can be used effectively, but will certainly inspire historians to engage in research in this subfield of historiography. Also as regards the other areas of the so-called Polish lands in the 19th century. Geographical space is, after all, fundamental to the existence of societies and individuals, and these are at the heart of research by historians.

This book addresses the issues of memory (a more suitable word would be Marianne Hirsh’s term of postmemory) of the Holocaust among young Poles, the attitudes towards Jews and the Holocaust in the comparative context of educational developments in other countries. The term “Jews” is, as rightly noted Joanna Tokarska-Bakir (2010) a decontextualized term used here in the meaning of Antoni Sułek (2010) as a collective “symbolic” entity. The focus was on education (transmitting values), attitudinal changes and actions undertaken to preserve (or counteract) the memory of Jews and their culture in contemporary Poland. The study to which the book primarly refers was conducted in 2008 and was a second study on a national representative sample of Polish adolescents after the first one undertaken in 1998. The data may seem remote from the current political situation of stepping back from the tendency to increase education about the Holocaust which dominated after 1989 and especially between 2000 and 2005, nonetheless they present trends and outcomes of specific educational interventions which are universal and may set examples for various geopolitical contexts.

The focus of this research was not primarily on the politics of remembrance, which often takes a national approach, although state initiatives are also brought to the attention of the reader, but rather on grassroots action, often initiated by local civil society organizations (NGOs) or individual teachers and/or students. This study has attempted to discover the place that Jews have (or do not have) in the culture of memory in Poland, where there lived the largest Jewish community in pre-war Europe, more than 90% of which was murdered during the Holocaust. The challenge was to show the diversity of phenomena aimed at integrating Jewish history and culture into national culture, including areas of extracurricular education, often against mainstream educational policy, bearing in mind that the Jews currently living in Poland are also, in many cases, active partners in various public initiatives. It is rare to find in-depth empirical research investigating the ensemble of areas of memory construction and the attitudes of youth as an ensemble, including the evaluation of actions (programmes of non-governmental organisations and school projects) in the field of education, particularly with reference to the long-term effects of educational programmes. The assumption prior to this project was that the asking of questions appearing during this research would stimulate further studies.


The book is divided into three parts: Memory, Attitudes and Actions. All three parts of the book, although aimed at analysing an ongoing process of reconstructing and deconstructing memory of the Holocaust in post-2000 Poland, including the dynamics of the attitudes of Polish youth toward Jews, the Shoah and memory of the Shoah, are grounded in different theories and were inspired by various concepts. The assumption prior to the study was that this complex process of attitudinal change cannot be interpreted and explained within the framework on one single academic discipline or one theory. Education and the cultural studies definitely played a significant role in exploring initiatives undertaken to research, study and commemorate the Holocaust and the remnants of the rich Jewish culture in Poland, but the sociology, anthropology and psychology also played a part in helping to see this process from various angles.

The Festschrift is a collection of papers written in honour of Professor Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld to mark the occasion of her 70th birthday.

Professor Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld is one of the leading authorities in the field of language contact, and has pursued research on the influence of English on Polish and other European languages, Polish-English contrastive studies, as well as various aspects of English grammar. She has authored more than 160 publications, including four books, as well as course books and academic papers. She has also edited and co-edited dictionaries of English borrowings in Polish.

The Festschrift volume comprises papers from the world of linguistics which have been authored by eminent scholars from Poland and abroad. The chapters included in the volume focus on various issues, including those from the area of contact linguistics. The topics covered in the research papers comprise, for instance, the influence of English on different languages, such as Polish, Danish, Afrikaans, Swedish, Spanish, German and Japanese, as well as on Asian languages and cultures. The authors investigate Celtic borrowings in Polish, anglicisms in Serbian, or Yiddish borrowings in contemporary American English. The contributions also discuss the phenomenon of Ponglish, i.e., the communication code used by Poles living in the UK, the presence of foreign languages in the linguistic landscape of Kraków, as well as the problem of multilingualism in Europe, the relation between language, culture and identity, and the influence of globalisation on both Polish language and culture. Finally, selected chapters address a range of phenomena related to Karaim, Russenorsk, and Turkish.

This book aims to commemorate and honor people and events in Polish and Ukrainian theater at a time when people-to-people solidarity is especially important and should rise above nationalistic prejudices, historical resentments or political interests. For Polish and Ukrainian theater artists, 2014 and the beginning of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine marked a period when distant poetics and theatrical traditions, as well as artists who had no creative or social ties to each other, began to work together. They began to discover themselves and their theater in the face of an enemy that, for some, was real and a threat, destroying their country, and for others a potential danger.
The ambition of the book is to present artistic activities in a broad social and political context. For theater in the face of war never functions in an abstract vacuum, it happens here and now , created by people for whom art is both a form of artistic expression, but also a struggle for independence.

The monograph should be seen as an attempt to present changes affecting the category of family farm owners in Poland over the last 70 years, since the end of World War II. These changes brought significant social transformations, including the dismantling of the landowner class (who had large agricultural farms in their possession), moving the state border westward and changing the multiethnic Polish society into one close to ethnic homogeneity.

The main goal of this reflection is to recount ways in which family farms coped with various unfavorable forces and factors in order to remain in operation. One could say that the entire study can be viewed as a manifestation of the well-known phrase that served as the title of the James C. Scott book (1990): Domination and the Arts of Resistance. The monograph presented here refers to these analyses stemming from another edition of sociological research, completed within the framework of the MAESTRO project financed by the National Science Center of Poland.

The main goal of the project was to depict the functioning of agricultural family farms as the traditional sector of agriculture in Poland in the contemporary context of globalization processes. The farms were examined in terms of the principles of sustainable development as well as flexibility and resilience in reaction to various crises.

The monograph is divided into four essential parts. The first part is devoted to the theoretical issues and methodological groundwork for the entire publication. The second part of the book aims to capture the changes that took place from 1994 to 2017, which was an adequate period to encompass the changes and metamorphoses that mostly happened as a result of two things: the regime transformation which began in 1990, and Poland’s accession to the European Union on May 1, 2004. The third part deals with the crucial issues of regional variations, mostly in regard to life strategies and strategies of operating agricultural farms. Finally, there is a fourth part which places the focus on select themes, such as rural lifestyles, food safety and security, farmers’ utilization of new computer and IT resources, and the potential for socio-political mobilization.

The year 1989 marked the end of one era and the beginning of another—the period of postcommunist transformation. Similar processes were taking place in other former Eastern Bloc countries that were declaring free elections, reclaiming full sovereignty, building democracy, and completely changing their economies in favor of free market capitalism. The several historic months in the latter half of 1989 came to be known as the “Autumn of Nations” and ushered in the total liberation of East-Central Europe from Soviet domination. Less than two years later, the Soviet Union itself collapsed, signaling the end of the Cold War in Europe. The new era brought not only political and economic changes, but also cultural ones which would lead to reclaiming individual liberties and other civil rights, as well as to the rebuilding of national identities within the European community which could now, finally, encompass the entire continent. Culture became a moving force for change, as censorship was abolished, monuments to communist heroes were removed, and streets renamed.

The radical cultural changes reverberated in the art of the period, its ideology, and the system of institutional sponsorship that promoted the three approaches most popular with artists. Many of them engaged in the changes directly, creating works that either commented on current events or proposed what they believed to be the right direction for the transformation to take. Others, although preferring to observe from a distance, highlighted the diverse contexts and historical antecedents generated by the cultural identities of countries, regions, or even artistic centers, in which the changes were rooted. The third contribution of contemporary art was its role in shaping how we remember the communist period, by on the one hand questioning the past, and on the other accenting the persistence of the traces it left behind, thereby inviting reflection on its negative as well as its positive ramifications. The art created in these circumstances and that related directly to the post-1989 transition, democracy, and a free market economy can be united under the name “art of the transformation” and it is the subject of this publication.