The book deals with manifestations and relics of magical thinking in the narrative folklore of Cieszyn Silesia (Teschen Silesia, Těšín Silesia). The point of departure is a phenomenological and ...social constructivist approach to human cognition. The author follows the cognitive dimensions of pre-modern folklore and popular texts in general. They are conventional in the sense that they are repeated in many variants inside one communicative group. Habituation based on more or less accurate reproduction of stereotypes (and corresponding experiences), motives, action scenarios, rationalizations, and motivations, is the source of relatively stable world image. The key concept developed in the book is redefined categorization understood as the simplification and stabilization of too complex and changing reality through shared narratives.
Publishing Subversive Texts in Elizabeth England and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth provides original and thorough comparative analyses of the effects of national censorship in early modern ...England and Poland-Lithuania on the intellectual and information exchange in both countries.
This monograph, which complements the existing body of work on the Armenian diaspora in a Central European context, is the first demographic synthesis devoted to the Armenian community in Old Poland ...and Austrian Galicia (1772–1860). It is the story of the biological and cultural trajectory of a human life: birth, marriage, childbearing, family life, sickness, old age and death. The author enumerates the Armenian diaspora in Austrian Galicia and poses questions regarding Armenian identity, religious practices and community life. The book includes a discussion of archival sources and contains a selection of the parish family registers (status animarum) in the annex. These documents, which not only enhance the narration but also detail the Armenian families, can stimulate further research and support genealogical investigations.
When an independent Poland reappeared on the map of Europe after World War I, it was widely regarded as the most Catholic country on the continent, as "Rome's Most Faithful Daughter." All the same, ...the relations of the Second Polish Republic with the Church-both its representatives inside the country and the Holy See itself-proved far more difficult than expected.Based on original research in the libraries and depositories of four countries, including recently opened collections in the Vatican Secret Archives,Rome's Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 1914-1939presents the first scholarly history of the close but complex political relationship of Poland with the Catholic Church during the interwar period.Neal Peaseaddresses, for example, the centrality of Poland in the Vatican's plans to convert the Soviet Union to Catholicism and the curious reluctance of each successive Polish government to play the role assigned to it. He also reveals the complicated story of the relations of Polish Catholicism with Jews, Freemasons, and other minorities within the country and what the response of Pope Pius XII to the Nazi German invasion of Poland in 1939 can tell us about his controversial policies during World War II.Both authoritative and lively,Rome's Most Faithful Daughtershows that the tensions generated by the interplay of church and state in Polish public life exerted great influence not only on the history of Poland but also on the wider Catholic world in the era between the wars.
The numerous discoveries of disintegrated skeletons of large terrestrial vertebrates within several thin levels of the Upper Silesian Keuper initiated broad investigations into the palaeoenvironment ...and age of the bone-bearing sediments. Despite years of research, the depositional history of the Upper Triassic continental succession and its controlling factors are still poorly recognized. This paper reconstructs the depositional evolution of the Upper Triassic strata in Upper Silesia, Poland, discusses the tectonic and climatic control on deposition, and identifies the sediment provenance. Detailed sedimentological analysis enabled the recognition of three major palaeoenvironments: (1) playa; (2) distal floodplain featured by gilgai micromorphology; (3) fluvial system (sand-dominated meandering, sand- and gravel-dominated braided, and potentially anastomosing river system). The transition from one palaeoenvironment into another reflects climatic changes throughout the late Triassic. The Carnian interval is dominated by gypsum-rich playa mudstones deposited under hot and arid conditions, with only one wet episode recorded as meandering river sandstones (the so-called Carnian Pluvial Event). In contrast, Norian sedimentation was controlled by strong seasonal climatic variations, which is reflected in alternating palaeosol horizons (vertisols and calcisols), thin claystone beds (small water-pond deposits), and conglomerates (rapid flood events). This facies assemblage was formed in a relatively stable floodplain which became the main habitat of numerous vertebrate organisms. The Rhaetian is represented by a gravel-dominated braided river system developed in response to significant climate humidification, with tectonic controls on flow direction. Clast types from Norian and Rhaetian conglomerates revealed that the studied area was fed from the south and south west by the San River and Moesian Massifs. Geochemical analysis of Norian palaeosol horizons suggests mean annual precipitation of ~720 mm/yr in agreement with the palaeoclimatic reconstructions for the area, pointing to seasonal sub-humid to semi-arid climate conditions.
•Carnian-Norian terrestrial deposits from SE Germanic Basin represent playa and gilgai-type floodplain environments.•The evolution of gilgai environments was mainly controlled by climatic changes through Late Triassic.•Gravel analysis indicates San River and Moesian platform sources.•Palaeosol type and geochemistry indicate climatic seasonality with precipitation at 720 mm/yr.
The newly dicovered complete corpus of the Jewish poll-tax lists provides a totally new outlook on Jewish autonomy in eighteenth century Poland from which a full reconstruction of the Jewish ...settlement can be drawn. The book includes series of tables and maps.
InA Minor Apocalypse, Robert Blobaum explores the social and cultural history of Warsaw's "forgotten war" of 1914-1918. Beginning with the bank panic that accompanied the outbreak of the Great War, ...Blobaum guides his readers through spy scares, bombardments, mass migratory movements, and the Russian evacuation of 1915. Industrial collapse marked only the opening phase of Warsaw's wartime economic crisis, which grew steadily worse during the German occupation. Requisitioning and strict control of supplies entering the city resulted in scarcity amid growing corruption, rapidly declining living standards, and major public health emergencies.Blobaum shows how conflicts over distribution of and access to resources led to social divisions, a sharp deterioration in Polish-Jewish relations, and general distrust in public institutions. Women's public visibility, demands for political representation, and perceived threats to the patriarchal order during the war years sustained one arena of cultural debate. New modes of popular entertainment, including cinema, cabaret, and variety shows, created another, particularly as they challenged elite notions of propriety. Blobaum presents these themes in comparative context, not only with other major European cities during the Great War but also with Warsaw under Nazi German occupation a generation later.
In the nineteenth century, state policy towards prostitution was primarily shaped by an assessment of its role in spreading venereal diseases. In this book, the author traces normative and ...organisational efforts of the authorities of the Kingdom of Poland, which sought to maintain control over prostitution and the health of women who offered paid sexual services. The author uses data collected by the police and medical authorities supervising legal and illegal prostitution to provide a demographic and sociological picture of the big-city and small-town market of sexual commerce. It was only in the early twentieth century when prostitution became an important subject of the Polish public debate, a process which is described in the book against the backdrop of the major issues and fears of the epoch.
This book was the first English-language history of Poland from the Second World War until the fall of Communism. Using a wide range of Polish archives and unpublished sources in Moscow and ...Washington, Tony Kemp-Welch integrates the Cold War history of diplomacy and inter-state relations with the study of domestic opposition and social movements. His key themes encompass political, social and economic history; the Communist movement and its relations with the Soviet Union; and the broader East-West context with particular attention to US policies. The book concludes with a first-hand account of how Solidarity formed the world's first post-Communist government in 1989 as the Polish people demonstrated what can be achieved by civic courage against apparently insuperable geo-strategic obstacles. This compelling new account will be essential reading for anyone interested in Polish history, the Communist movement and the course of the Cold War.
Polish-born artist Ewa Partum is considered a pioneer of Central-Eastern European feminist art produced within the conceptual idiom. Her work can also be divided chronologically into Polish ...(1965-82), West Berlin (1982-1989) and transnational (from 1989) periods. Karolina Majewska-Güde articulates the historical alterity of Ewa Partum's works in their various locations and the specificity of the positions from which Partum's art was interpreted and disseminated. At the same time, the book engages with the art histories of the Central and Eastern European neo-avant-gardes focusing on the issue of narrative strategies of CEE art history.
