Przemiany dyskursu emancypacyjnego kobiet, Seria I, Perspektywa środkowoeuropejska

Abstract

This volume brings together studies, sketches and essays that were originally delivered as papers during the International Conference ‘Metamorphoses of the Female Emancipatory Formula from the 18th Century to the Interwar Period in the 20th Century’, which took place in Białystok, 26-27 September 2013. The event gathered about 120 researchers on questions of woman’s emancipation from Poland, Ukraine, the USA, Belarus and Lithuania. The conference marked the 110th anniversary of the important Polish emancipation manifesto, Female Voices on Female Issues (Głos kobiet w kwestii kobiecej, Kraków 1903). The conference papers addressed the following problems: - Formulas of emancipation expressed in the manifestos of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Positivism, Modernism and the Interwar Period. - Literary manifestations of various emancipatory ideas. - Polish emancipatory formulas in the East-European context (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, etc.). - Genres and emancipatory formulas – the formal expression of the emancipatory thought. - The emancipation of women in Polish culture and the representation of men, family and children. - Historical and social circumstances surrounding the emancipation. - Traditionalist and anti-emancipatory formulas of thinking about female issues. - New media (radio, press, etc.) and the spread of the emancipatory thought. - Emancipatory ideas in painting, theatre, music, film and sculpture. - A review of historical and literary research into female emancipation; its metamorphoses, peculiarities, forms. The conference was organized by the Department of ‘East-West’ Philological Studies of the Faculty of Philology, University of Białystok, and the Department of Polish Studies, Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, Ukraine. Conference events and sessions were organized by Anna Janicka, dr hab. (the University of Białystok), a researcher into the work of Gabriela Zapolska; Barbara Olech, PhD (the University of Białystok), a researcher into the literature of the Young Poland movement and the works of Maria Grossek-Korycka; Corinne Fournier Kiss, dr hab. (the University of Bern, Switzerland), a researcher into the problems of emancipation in Polish, Czech and Swiss literature; Maryia Brack, dr hab. (Department of Polish Studies, Kyiv, Ukraine), a researcher into Polish and Ukrainian Romantic literature. The conference proceedings took place in the Branicki Palace and at the Faculty of Philology, University of Białystok. This volume brings together those conference papers which focus on the emancipation of women in Central and Eastern Europe. It has been divided into the following chapters: I. ”Women at the Turning Points” (which presents the role of women at decisive historical moments from the 18th to the 20th century); II. “Two Europes: East and West” (which presents the freedom of female experience in the eastern and western parts of the continent); III. “The Beginnings of Modernity” (which analyses 19th-century emancipatory ideas and opposing views); IV. “Central and Eastern Europe Once Again” (which focuses on detailed analyses of the texts documenting the Central and Eastern European experience of emancipation). The articles included assume an interdisciplinary perspective. The reader will find here the opinions of historians of literature, linguists, historians, historians of art, and researchers into Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish and Belarusian studies. The volume is an additional contribution to Studies on Female Literature, edited by Anna Janicka, and as such is part of the Series ‘Watersheds/Borderlands’ published by the Scholarly Publishing Project, Białystok.