Call for Papers 2017

The conference will take place in Chicago at the Richard J. Daley Library on UIC’s campus, Monday, April 24 and Tuesday, April 25, 2017.

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.

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 szawara@uic.edu.  In the subject of your e-mail please include your last name, university affiliation and conference mention (e.g. SMITH, Northwestern, Abstract for Modernizations).