Eastern European Emigrants and (Self-)Liberation: National Emancipation and Personal Freedom in Polish and Czechoslovak Discourses Abroad

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Traditionally, the historiography of Poland focused on the ways in which the émigrés and emigrants from the foreign-occupied lands campaigned for their nations’ liberation from abroad. The “nation” to be liberated was first defined in political terms by the aristocratic Polish elites, which comprised the first wave of emigration, and their definition did not always accommodate the economic and personal aspirations of the middle and lower classes. The liberation of the Czech and Slovak lands from the Habsburg rule and German aristocracy took a different path that involved mobilization of different social strata. However, one common denominator in the liberation of Polish, Czech and Slovak societies was en masse emigration to Western Europe and North America in the decades leading to World War I, which often came with externalized nationalism. Taking into consideration the questions of class, colonialism and ethnicity, this panel of historians of art and politics will explore both “old” and “new” ideas about liberation among Polish and Czechoslovak emigrants in the West. Kacper Radny will examine the art created by the Polish “Munich School”, its orientalization by the Western public, and the responses to it. Ben Dew will discuss the ideas of liberation in the historical writing of Polish émigrés in Britain. Finally, Marta Filipová will talk about the role of folk culture in the self-liberation of Czech and Slovak emigrants in the United States.

Sub Unit

• History: 1800-1900

Chair

• Piotr Puchalski, U of the National Education Commission, Krakow (Poland)

Papers

• Orientalization of 19th-Century Eastern European Art: The Case Study of the 'Polish Munich School' - Kacper Radny, U of Giessen (Germany)

• Émigré Poles in Britain: Historical Writing and the Idea of Liberation, 1830-1918 - Ben Dew, Coventry U (UK)

• From Czechoslovakian Peasants to American Ladies: Folk Art as a Tool of Emancipation in the USA - Marta Filipova, Masaryk U (Czech Republic)

• Who Benefited from the Liberation of the Peasants?: Migration Activity of Peasants in Polish Lands and Its Beneficiaries - Claudia Snochowska-Gonzalez, Institute of Slavic Studies, PAN (Poland)

Discussant

• Małgorzata Abassy, Jagiellonian U (Poland)