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Announcement of the book by the research fellow of the Centre for Historical Research Wiktor Marzec «From Cotton and Smoke: Łódź – Industrial City and Discourses of Asynchronous Modernity, 1897–1994»

Announcement of the book by the research fellow of the Centre for Historical Research Wiktor Marzec «From Cotton and Smoke: Łódź – Industrial City and Discourses of Asynchronous Modernity, 1897–1994»

In February 2019 Jagiellonian University Press published a book called «From Cotton and Smoke: Łódź – Industrial City and Discourses of Asynchronous Modernity, 1897–1994» by Agata Zysiak, Kamil Śmiechowski, Kamil Piskała, Kaja Kaźmierska, Jacek Burski and Wiktor Marzec, a research fellow at the Center for Historical Research.

The authors, who had placed the capital of the Polish nineteenth century in the textile industrial hub—Łódź (now Central Poland), were able to reveal its history as the history of struggle with modern change in Eastern Europe. The authors boldly challenge the romantic and noble-based Polish cultural imaginary, offering instead a revolutionary path to understanding confrontation with modernity in the region. The book includes 4 historical periods, the study of which is a multifaceted portrait of twentieth-century urban experience beyond the metropolis, previously unknown to the reader.

This interdisciplinary work deftly integrated urban and cultural history, historical sociology and discourse research. It will be of great value to Polish, Jewish, Eastern European and Slavic studies as well. The book also addresses core intellectual debates within urban studies, modernity studies, and historical discourse analysis worldwide.