The role of Western NGOs in the transition of postcommunist nations to democracy has been well documented. In this study, Paulina Pospieszna follows a different trajectory, examining the role of a ...former aid recipient (Poland), newly democratic itself, and its efforts to aid democratic transitions in the neighboring states of Belarus and Ukraine.Belarus is widely regarded as the most authoritarian state in the region, while Ukraine is witnessing a slow, if often troubled, democratic consolidation. Each state presents a different set of challenges to outside agencies. As Pospieszna shows, Poland is uniquely positioned to offer effective counsel on the transition to democracy. With similarities of language and culture, and a shared history, combined with strong civic activism and success within the European Union, Poland's regional policies have successfully combined its need for security and a motivation to spread democracy as primary concerns. Pospieszna details the founding, internal workings, goals, and methods of Poland's aid programs. She then compares the relative degrees of success of each in Belarus and Ukraine and documents the work yet to be done.As her theoretical basis, Pospieszna analyzes current thinking on the methods and effectiveness of NGOs in transitions to democracy, particularly U.S.- and European-led aid efforts. She then views the applicability of these methods to the case of Poland and its aid recipients. Overwhelmingly, Pospieszna finds the greatest success in developmental programs targeting civil society-workers, intellectuals, teachers, students, and other NGO actors.Through extensive interviews with government administrators and NGO workers in Poland and the United States, coupled with archival research, Pospieszna assembles an original perspective on the mitigation of the 'postcommunist divide'. Her work will serve as a model for students and scholars of states in transition, and it provides an overview of both successful and unsuccessful strategies employed by NGOs in democracy assistance.
Although recent linguistic and media-studies' research has increasingly dealt with forms of imagery beyond language, such as in audiovisual formats, only little attention has been paid to the ...specific media character of audiovisual images. This raises a theoretical as well as methodological problem: How can processes of figurative meaning making in audiovisual media be adequately conceptualized and described? The book intends to bridge this research gap with an analysis of campaign commercials, a hitherto largely underexplored object of study in metaphor and metonymy research. To achieve this goal, a transdisciplinary film-analytical and cognitive-linguistic account of audiovisual figurativity is developed and examined through a comparative analysis of figurative meaning-making processes in German and Polish campaign commercials from 2009 and 2011. By setting the inseparable intertwining of language and cinematic staging, sensing and understanding center stage, the book provides insight into the dynamic nature and embodied affective grounds of audiovisual figurativity, and challenges the long-known dichotomies of rational discourse and affective manipulation, political message and media effect.
This volume is made up of essays first presented as papers at the conference held in May 2015 at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. It is divided into two sections. The first deals ...with museological questions—the voices of the curators, comments on the POLIN museum exhibitions and projects, and discussions on Jewish museums and education. The second examines the current state of the historiography of the Jews on the Polish lands from the first Jewish settlement to the present day. Making use of the leading scholars in the field from Poland, Eastern and Western Europe, North America, and Israel, the volume provides a definitive overview of the history and culture of one of the most important communities in the long history of the Jewish people.
Public opinion in Poland was much interested in the developments concerning the South Slavs in the final phase of World War I. Poland was still partitioned at that time, so there was no Polish ...national press. However, Polish newspapers and periodicals published under Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian administration, as well as those published in already independent Poland, welcomed the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as the realisation of the natural law of small nations to independence and thus cheered the efforts of the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs to build their own state. There were more absorbing issues at the time, with Poland herself in the dramatic process of reclaiming independent statehood, and there was no involvement with the South Slavs, so the topic did not make it to the front pages. Nevertheless, public opinion in Poland was well versed in the activity of leading Slovenian, Serbian, and Croatian politicians and the Italian challenge to the negotiation of the borders of the newly-established state. It was also aware of the state’s religious heterogeneity—Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims—as a potential threat to national unity. No particular side was favoured. Even before the unification of the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs in a common state, the nations of Southeastern Europe were often referred to as Yugoslavia and the people as Yugoslavs. Occasionally, news concerning the South Slavs were printed in bold to emphasise the topic’s importance to Polish editors and readers.
After '89 Lease, Bryce
2016, 2016., 20160901, 2016-09-01
eBook
This book provides an exceptional introduction to Polish theatre since the fall of Communism, exploring how theatre goes beyond norms and nationalistic concepts to intersect with politics, feminism, ...queer identities, the rise in anti-Semitism, ethnicities and history.
Analizirajući pisanje beogradske periodične štampe autor je pokušao da rekonstruiše kako je početak Drugog svetskog rata izgledao u očima savremenika, kakve su bile njihove projekcije, analize, ...perspektive. Prilikom selekcije časopisa trudio se da u radu budu zastupljeni članci autora koji su nastupali sa najrazličitijih ideoloških i političkih pozicija.
Članek se loteva teme cenzuriranja poezije na Poljskem v 80. letih 20. stoletja. V prvem delu opisuje s književno ustvarjalnostjo povezano zapleteno pravno in politično situacijo, med drugim številne ...spremembe v zakonu o cenzuri. V nadaljevanju je predstavljena založniška zgodovina cenzuriranih ali zaseženih pesmi. Članek temelji na obširni arhivski poizvedbi, v znatnem delu v varšavskem Arhivu novih spisov (polj. Archiwum Akt Nowych, AAN).
This memoir is about a Jewish baby born in the Krakow ghetto in November 1942, three years after Hitler conquered Poland, and, remarkably, escaping death-one of a mere one half of one percent of ...Jewish children in Poland who survived during the Nazi era. Her life was saved because her parents hid her with a Catholic family. Just as remarkably, her mother, still alive after suffering terribly through four of Hitler's camps, traveled for weeks back to Poland and found her again. The book also depicts the author's postwar challenges in Germany and America.
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