Zofia Dembińska – zapomniana „architektka PRL-u”. Krytyczny przyczynek do feministycznej teorii i praktyki biograficznej w Polsce
Zofia Dembińska – A Forgotten “Woman Architect of the Polish People’s Republic”: A Critical Contribution to Feminist Biographical Theory and Practice in Poland

Summary/Abstract: Zofia Dembińska (1905-1989) co-founded the Czytelnik Publishing House, was deputy minister of education and member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. These achievements inspire Mrozik to call her a “woman architect of the Polish People’s Republic”. Examining Dembińska’s life and work, Mrozik not only rescues her from oblivion, but above all she examines the current state of feminist biographical theory and practice in Poland. The fact that women communists tend to be passed over in silence, she suggests, confirms the dominant national paradigm. Drawing on the work of Levke Harders and Antoinette Burton – theorists of biography and historians of the women’s movement – Mrozik argues that we need to rethink the subject of feminist scholarship. Calling for a more critical and contextualised and historicised perspective on the questions we ask and our own descriptive categories, she also indicates the challenges and opportunities that a transnational turn would present to scholars of history and biography.

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