Целью данной статьи является описание и анализ деятельности фонда HerStory, который занимается восстановлением памяти женщин заслуженных в истории Люблина и, кроме того, способом представления деятельности фонда в местных СМИ. Контент-анализ сообщений СМИ, как более широких с точки зрения количества пользователей, таких как TVP Люблин (TVP Lublin) и местных информационных ежедневных газет «Dziennik Wschodni», «Gazeta Wyborcza Lublin» и «Kurier Lubelski», так и анализ местных информационных веб-порталов, подтвердили, что исходная информационная база о деятельности фонда является очень скупой. Средства массовой информации посвящают мало времени на распространение информации на тему мероприятий, связанных с антидискриминационной деятельностью, и сообщениям о её ходе. Напротив, печатанные в СМИ материалы содержат лишь самую важную информацию о мероприятиях, организуемых фондом, но при этом не освящают другие области его деятельности. В материалах, доступных в Интернете, нет также аудиовизуальных отчетов, о которых сообщает отправитель. Статья основана на доступных в Интернете газетных материалах, потому что они обычно содержат больше информации, чем бумажные издания. Прежде всего нужно отметить широкую область деятельности фонда HerStory, что не соответствует количеству материалов, доступных в СМИ. Статьи в прессе предоставляют информацию о мероприятиях, которые организует HerStory, на выборочной основе. Кроме того, отсутствуют также приложения в виде график, которые появляются на сайте фонда. СМИ также не представляют портретов женщин, которые являются героинями герсторических прогулок. Имена этих женщин представлены в этой статье. Фонд HerStory восстанавливает память и когда-то потерянную славу люблинским женщинам, которые внесли свой вклад в развитие города, благодаря своей социальной активности, а о которых по различным причинам история забыла.
EN
This article aims to describe and analyze the activities of the HerStory Foundation, which deals with restoring the memory of meritorious women in the history of Lublin and the way of presenting the activities of the foundation presented in local media. The analysis of the content of media coverage of both broader media in terms of the number of recipients, such as TVP Lublin and local news diaries “Dziennik Wschodni” and “Kurier Lubelski”, as well as local news portals, proved that the source database regarding the foundation’s activities is very scant. In the media, little space is devoted to promoting events related to anti-discrimination activities and reports on their course. In contrast, articles published by the media are usually limited to presenting the most important information about an event organized by the foundation without bringing the other areas of its activity closer. In the materials available on the Internet, there are also no audiovisual reports that the sender informs about. The article is mainly based on press materials available on the Internet, because they usually contain more information than paper editions. First of all, it should be noted how wide the area of the Herstory Foundation’s activity is, which does not translate into the amount of materials available in the media. Press articles provide information about the undertakings organized by HerStory in a selective manner. There are also missing attachments in the form of graphics that appear on the foundation’s website. The media also do not present the characters of women who are the heroines of herstoric walks, and whose names have been highlighted in this article. Figures of the Lubliners who have made a contribution to the city by their social involvement, but for some reason the story about them has been forgotten by the HerStory Foundation and restores to them their once-lost fame.
This paper is concerned with the feminisation of contemporary Polish historical novel, especiallyof its biographical variant. Transforming traditional narratives and restoring the memoryof women in history are the most important tasks of herstory, a discipline born in the twentiethcentury out of the question about the role and place of women in the history of humankind. The authorof this paper pays particular attention to the texts of popular culture, especially biographical novelsabout women written by female writers, such as Ewa Stachniak, Janina Lesiak and Alina Zerling--Konopka. Historical novels written by female authors bring into sharp focus the postulates of feministliterary criticism, such as reclaiming the history of women by filling in the gaps in historicalnarratives and shifting the point of view, which allows for the depiction of the activity of womenin the fields traditionally considered male. What emerges from such novels are unobvious themes,but also the revision of the solidified images of famous figures. However, a considerable numberof those texts does not translate into their artistic merit.
The article deals with the subject of relations between theories of violence and the category of collective memory in relation to women’s war stories. The text introduces the issue of war and conflict, understanding the theory of violence, the category of collective memory and female war narratives, as well as the ways of their political interpretation. The interpretation is crucial because of method used in the research, meaning hermeneutics, but also because of the, presented here, perspective of polyphony.
Our research project “Unworthy of History” focuses on discussing the historical narrative in Polishhistory textbooks that are used in teaching history at the middle school level. The aim is to analyze and describe ways of thinking about as well as presenting the role and place of women and men in history in schools. Research shows that women are portrayed in textbooks as playing a less important role than men – they are almost non-existent in public life. “(...) what is male is universal. What is female is accidental and secondary”. The few women that are mentioned in these textbooks are portrayed in traditional roles, usually family roles, and in those contexts and spheres of life that are culturally considered to be typically feminine. Women are not only under-represented in history textbooks; also, informationabout them is often distorted or simply untrue. The topic of the (in)equality between women and men as well as the history of women’s emancipation movements, which are related to the empowerment of half of humanity, is not considered worthy to be presented in Polish textbooks. Our presentation and study focused on the absence and stereotypical representations of women scientists in Polish history textbooks. The results reveal that although women could be as creative and hard working as men – not exclusively in the fields traditionally associated with women (e.g. Josephine Cochran invented the dishwasher in 1872, and Marion Donovan – disposable diapers in 1950) butalso in those associated with men (e.g. Mary Anderson created windshield wipers in 1903 and Grace Murray found the first computer bug in 1947) – their contribution to the development of societies is marginalised, trivialised or totally omitted by the authors Polish history textbooks. In every textbook analysed, men make up over 90% of characters introduced by name although they were not necessarily widely known. On the other hand, women who achieved professional success in science, art or social development get ignored.
EN
Our research project “Unworthy of History” focuses on discussing the historical narrative in Polishhistory textbooks that are used in teaching history at the middle school level. The aim is to analyze and describe ways of thinking about as well as presenting the role and place of women and men in history in schools. Research shows that women are portrayed in textbooks as playing a less important role than men – they are almost non-existent in public life. “(...) what is male is universal. What is female is accidental and secondary”. The few women that are mentioned in these textbooks are portrayed in traditional roles, usually family roles, and in those contexts and spheres of life that are culturally considered to be typically feminine. Women are not only under-represented in history textbooks; also, informationabout them is often distorted or simply untrue. The topic of the (in)equality between women and men as well as the history of women’s emancipation movements, which are related to the empowerment of half of humanity, is not considered worthy to be presented in Polish textbooks. Our presentation and study focused on the absence and stereotypical representations of women scientists in Polish history textbooks. The results reveal that although women could be as creative and hard working as men – not exclusively in the fields traditionally associated with women (e.g. Josephine Cochran invented the dishwasher in 1872, and Marion Donovan – disposable diapers in 1950) butalso in those associated with men (e.g. Mary Anderson created windshield wipers in 1903 and Grace Murray found the first computer bug in 1947) – their contribution to the development of societies is marginalised, trivialised or totally omitted by the authors Polish history textbooks. In every textbook analysed, men make up over 90% of characters introduced by name although they were not necessarily widely known. On the other hand, women who achieved professional success in science, art or social development get ignored.
The paper is an attempt at tracing the relations between the title categories of Kobieta – Historia – Literatura [Woman – History – Literature]. While concentrating on female writing, the researcher finds there the issues which have not been yet analysed, for example the feminist perspective of Wisława Szymborska’s poetry in her understanding of history; the question of identity, sexuality, corporality in the texts of postwar and contemporary female immigrant writers; politics of gender roles and stereotypes in (literary and non-literary) descriptions of Holocaust; and finally, the spatial determination of the female writers’ (Pola Gojawiczyńska) narratives about the history of postwar Warsaw. However, the most significant purpose of this article is to present diverse literary contexts which make it possible to tell “grand history”/“grand narrative” with the use of various strategies of narration created by women or placing a female figure (”feminity”) inside it.
The aim of the article is to shape the field of scientific exploration which is opening in the internet space as a social archive. It is a space for building herstories – women’s histories as well as social memory about them. The author refers to the definition of herstory by presenting a variety of contexts in which the concept functions: ideological, scientific, and that which is created by bottom-up initiatives of social archival science. Herstoric discourse, being shaped in the space of digital social archives, fits into the intense and changing public discourse on equality. A discursive overview of herstory will enhance our knowledge not only of equality/ anti-discriminative discourse regulations, but also about civil or urban discourse. What is more, it will provide new findings on the topic of women’s style and point of view. There are also valuable social effects of discursive interest in herstories – they can contribute to including women’s histories, their voices and way of thinking about the world into the public sphere.
The article concerns the recently found private archive of Teresa Feodorowna Ries (1866-1956) who was a famous Viennese sculptor before the World War II. After the annexation to the German Reich in 1938, Ries, who was Jewish, remained in Vienna until probably 1942. Despite the imminent danger and difficult living conditions in Vienna, she tried to organise and regulate the preservation and whereabouts of her works. Her studio in the Gartenpalais Liechtenstein was evacuated and the works expropriated. The whereabouts of many of these works are still unclear, and many are considered lost. In 2018 this private archive was offered for sale in an auction house in Monaco. Since there was no interested party, the author of this article was lucky enough to acquire it about half a year later. The private archive contains letters, documents, photographs, a diary, poems, newspaper articles, lists of artworks, the last will and testament of her mother Bertha Ries and her own, handwritten by Ries. The term ‘archive’ includes different aspects which reflect in the work of Ries in both artistic and historical perspectives. The archive, the accumulation and the collection starting from the beginning, should be transferred into the here and now. The archive, as a place for the memory, for memories and records, returns to its starting point – Vienna. With all the collected documents and gathered information it is now possible to achieve an insight into the life of the artist Teresa Feodorowna Ries, and to continue the search for missing parts and links. The fact that today the original or complete form and condition of certain sculptures can only be seen in photographs is obviously a limiting factor when writing about the artist and her work, but also raises further interesting questions: how to write about something that does not exist any longer?
The aim of the article is to analyze refraction in selected herstory publications for children, presenting the biographies of famous female figures. The subject of reflection is: Stories for Kids Who Dare to Be Different: True Tales of Amazing People Who Stood Up and Stood Out by Ben Brooks, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women vol. I and vol. II by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World and Fantastically Great Women Who Made History by Kate Pankhurst. The aim of this type of literature is to introduce unknown or less known historical female figures and to create new role models for children. However, the article points out that the authors of the discussed publications not only create too one-sided, simplified images of the heroines, ignoring their difficulties, mistakes and related controversies, but also often neglect other, private aspects of their lives in favor of talking about their careers and striving for power and wealth. In addition, in the books discussed there is an underutilization or only partial use of the potential hidden in the complicated and sometimes only partially recognized biographies of women. The writers selectively treat the biographies of ambiguous or controversial characters.
The text was conceived as a review, combined with an analysis and interpretation, of texts written by Polish women authors after 2010, especially novels and short story collections in which the grandmother is an important character. Women authors from the 1970s and 1980s, who in creating various herstories, make the eldest women in the family the disposers of narratives, responsible for building specific bridges between the past and the present, as well as the guardians of memory and guides through the labyrinth of interpersonal relations. The numerous representations of grandmothers in post-2010 literature is directly related to the ‘family turn’ in domestic prose announced over a decade ago, as well as to the transformations within women’s literature, in which the mother-daughter relationship is being replaced by a granddaughter (rarely grandson) - grandmother relationship. Granddaughters become narrators, through them the grandmothers’ stories taking verbal shape. The established bond enables the creation of alternative versions of herstories in which grandmothers, as delegates of the past, teach granddaughters in the present how to cope with the future. “The grandmotherly turn”, however, marks above all the emergence of the figure of the Polish grandmother, enabling granddaughters to speak about themselves (and them also) in their own voice.
In this article, the authors confront the thesis found in historical discourse about the dominance of male figures in historical narratives present in the public sphere. In order to do so, they analyse the new research field that is the social networking site YouTube and the most popular channels on historical topics contained therein. The main research question is whether women are marginalised in the narratives contained in the sources discussed, in which contexts they appear and what is the reception of the films in which they appear. In addition, the authors look at the question of the form of historical narratives. The study combines quantitative methods (descriptive statistics, correspondence analysis) as well as qualitative methods (Northrop Frye’s typology of story motifs. For this purpose, 551 films were analysed, which were then annotated using seven groups of tags corresponding to the content of the sources ‑ concerning the functioning of female characters and the subject matter of the films. As a result of the analyses carried out, it was observed that the thesis of the absolute dominance of male characters in historical narratives does not fully hold true under the conditions of Web 2.0 sources in terms of quantity, while in terms of content it cannot be accepted unreservedly in the context of the very diverse use of female themes in social media resources.
The paper deals with the presence of women in house-museum exhibitions on the example of the Władysław Broniewski Museum in Warsaw. The framework of the text is the proces of reating a museum intervention entitled “Domowniczki”, highlighting three women associated with Broniewski’s house – Wanda Broniewska, Joanna (Anka) Broniewska-Kozicka and Marianna Milewska. Based on this process, I analyse the (in)presence of women in house-museum exhibitions and aim at a way to reclaim their presence by opening a dialogue with the exhibition.
The article is the result of research conducted within the project “Women, peace Seekers” implemented with the support of the Europe for Citizens Programme. It raises issues of women’s presence in the history and presents examples of it. It consists of three parts: the explanation of herstory as current research area, the presentation of the symbolic relationship between a woman, war and violence and presentation war herstories of female Lodz residents.
PL
Artykuł jest efektem badań prowadzonych w ramach projektu „Kobiety, woja pokój” realizowanego przy wsparciu programu Europa dla obywateli. Porusza kwestie kobiecej obecności w historii i przedstawia jej przykłady. Składa się z trzech części: wyjaśnienia czym jest herstory jako nurt badawczy, prezentacji symbolicznej relacji między kobietą, wojną i przemocą oraz przedstawienia wojennych opowieści łodzianek
The article is review on the latest book by Ewa Stachniak, The Chosen Maiden. It is a fictionalised biography belonging to more and more popular femino-centric trend of the contemporary historical fiction. Stachniak based on the life of ballet dancer-choreographer Bronislawa Nijinska, sister of Vaslav Nijinsky. Having done much research, she convincingly articulates what she imagines to be the workings of Bronia’s mind, her passion and conviction as an artist, and her ability to endure privates tragedies.
The text introduces the figure of Wisława Knapowska, one of the first independent scholars of Poznań University, a researcher and teacher of the best schools in the interwar period. It shows her path to academic independence and the many barriers she encountered in her life. The text is part of the socalled herstory, asking for the past and history of women’s narratives.
The article is an evaluation of the contribution of women to the development of the “Onomastica” journal in the years 1955–2016. The author presents the “feminised” history of the journal as an equally valid alternative to the “typical” masculinised timeline. The theoretical context here is based on M. Foucault’s concept of power-knowledge and the idea of herstory in science. The article shows general numerical tendencies regarding women’s contributions to the article throughout 60 years of its existence and describes differences and discrepancies.The author outlines how during the first 30 years of the existence of the journal (1955–1985), there were not many female contributors, but their number grew between 1985 and 2016. The author argues that the reason for such changes is the emancipation of female scholars in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and structural changes in the academic life in Poland after the Second World War. She highlights the work of scholars whose influence on the journal has been the most significant since the establishment of the journal, such as M. Karpluk, M. Malec or H. Popowska-Taborska.
The paper discusses young adult fiction by Joanna Rudniańska, whose works belong to the stream of non-conformist coming-of-age novels marked by experiences of exclusively teenage girls/women, developing in Poland since the 1990s. Both Rok Smoka and Kotka Brygidy emphasise the personal quality of teenage girls and women, and present their fates with a particular consideration of their fairly individualised processes of maturation and intentional development of their identities. The author of this paper employs feminist methodologies to emphasise the ambivalent, borderline, and negative female experiences in the analysed texts. She offers a detailed interpretation of how the protagonists of the above-mentioned novels experience the world; she applies a metaphorical and fantastic perspective of telling herstories, while searching for matrilineal traces, the phenomenon of sisterhood, drastic rituals inscribed in the feminine domain, and the special kind of coming-of-age which constitutes the starting point for personal and subjective herstories.
Can a theatrical spectacle rectify the greatest neglect of Poland’s post-1989 transformation and create a ‘positive’ founding myth of the ‘Solidarity’? This is the ambition of the musical 1989 produced by a creative team led by Marcin Napiórkowski, Katarzyna Szyngiera, Mirosław Wlekły and Andrzej ‘Wolny’ Webber (co-produced by the Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre and the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Krakow). According to the announcements, it was to be the first musical in Poland in the likeness of the American Hamilton, for the first time with entirely rapped vocals, showing the fall of communism from a new perspective and finally giving women their rightful place in the struggle for a free Poland. What captivates the audience is undoubtedly the musical and dance qualities of the performance, but the vision of history presented raises serious questions. A major misunderstanding in 1989 is the complete erasure of the church and the figure of John Paul II from the life of Poles in the 1980s. Furthermore, the diminishing of the role played by Lech Walesa in 1980-1989 is also completely incomprehensible. In the stage history, the leader of the August strike remains in the shadow of Jacek Kuroń and his own wife Danuta, and becomes a character without charisma, rather resembling Ubu Roi from Jarry’s play. The show tries to capture the energy of the Polish women’s strikes of the autumn of 2020, but on stage they are mainly rebellious lonely wives of activists who find encouragement in a conservative vision of family (‘to be simply one of many families’). There is nothing subversive here. Unlike in Hamilton, this is not a look at Poland ‘then’ from the perspective of Poland ‘today.’ Despite the repudiation of the traditional narratives, the paradigm of Polish Romanticism still triumphs because the entire dramatic plot is based on an old romantic cliché: ‘He did not find happiness at home because there was none in the fatherland’ (Mickiewicz, Konrad Wallenrod). The artists create their own counter-history, which they are of course artistically entitled to do, but they do not answer the question of causal power, i.e. where did society draw its strength to survive during martial law, or what led to the fall of the communist regime in 1989.
The subject of the article is herstorical reportage as a kind of unconventional approach to the past and one of the manifestations of the herstorical turn in the Polish humanities and contemporary literary field. The author analyzes the reasons for the growing popularity of the genre, related, among other things, to the memory turn and the demand for popular historical literature. The author attempts to characterize the poetics of herstorical reportage as a “blurred genre” and points out its connections with historical micro-writing and feminist criticism. Among other things, she points to the subjectivization of the author’s commentary, the inspiration of oral history, the disclosure of the reporter’s craft by reporting on the difficulties of finding documents and adding witnesses as distinguishing features of the genre. The author draws attention to the importance of the analytical category of gender for herstorical reportage, which makes it possible to reflect on cultural patterns of femininity and masculinity, their role in the formation of national identity, and to study gender-differentiated historical experience. The article analyzes the reportages of Marta Dzido, Olga Wiechnik, Marta Madejska and Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak with a particular focus on their narrative strategies and the location of the female reporter subject. The purpose of the article is to show the genre of herstorical reportage as an important element of engaged humanities and a remedy for the “gender blindness” of conventional historiography.
The article concerns the novels by Martyna Bunda Nieczułość, Anna Dziewit-Meller Od jednego Lucypera, and Joanna Bator Gorzko, gorzko. The author of the text compares these novels from the perspective of the relationship between mother and daughter, grandmother and granddaughter, as well as the category of daughters and sisters. In the first part of the text, the author focused on the changes in women’s literature after 1989, representations of motherhood, demythologising the figure of the Polish mother, and put forward a thesis on the reconstruction of female genealogy and the creation of multi-generational relations between women in recent prose. In the second part, the author analysed novels by Martyna Bunda, Anna Dziewit-Meller and Joanna Bator as realisations of women’s sagas, with particular emphasis on the poetics of this genre and its polemic against the traditional, patriarchal model of the family story. The author referred to research on the cultural theory of genre and changes in the image of the family in recent literature. Analysing selected novels, the author drew attention, among other things, to the absence of men in the family structure, the transgenerational transmission of trauma and the polemic against the motif of the happy family home. The author concluded that the representatives of the youngest generation are the depositories of family stories, through which they can rethink their identity, and that relationships with grandmothers and sisters replace their flawed and complicated relationship with their mother. In conclusion, the author used the category of the tender narrator from Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s lecture in relation to women’s narratives, including the quadruple perspective of women that occurs in the novels analysed.
The article is an attempt to reflect on the women’s experience of working on transgenerational trauma on example of the novel by Joanna Bator entitled Gorzko, gorzko. Due to the cultural marginalization and stigmatization, the process of understanding or interrupting intergenerational transmission of trauma costs women a lot of effort and sometimes do not succeed at all. The text analyses four generations mother-daughter (sometimes grandmother-granddaughter) relationships, in which the youngest family member tries to break the transgenerational transmissions to begin consciously creating her own future as free from the suffering of others.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.