Badanie kultury. Ludzie, projekty, realizacje
The study of culture: people, projects, achievements

Contributor(s): Anna Gomóła (Editor), Marek Pacukiewicz (Editor)
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Department of Theory and History of Culture; history; structure; research project; didactics
Summary/Abstract: The present monograph presents both the history of the Department of Theory andHistory of Culture, as well as its changing and developing over the years structure. The authors of individual articles have made an attempt at portraying the history of the Department in a broad, historic-cultural, as well as scientific context, taking into account the state of Polish cultural studies and its specificity as a part of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Silesia.The book has been divided into two parts. The first one is devoted to research projects that have so far been carried out by the Department and to the academic profile of the unit. Here one can find a historical overview presenting the process of shaping the community as well as the series of articles devoted to its selected achievements: anthropological field research, model research project devoted to Polish diaspora of Kazakhstan, the concept of cultural anthropology of literature, publications on the issue of shame in culture, memetic and socio-biological aspects of research into culture, as well as the model of the history of culture proposed by the Department.The second part has been devoted mainly to didactic projects (including the history of student research groups at the Department), as well as to the cooperation of the Department with numerous cultural institutions. The reader will find here reflections on the problem of teaching Polish culture, educating teachers on culture studies, as well as educating students in the field of cultural heritage at undergraduate studies. A separate issue is the characteristics of the journal entitled “Laboratorium Kultury” [A Laboratory of Culture] that has relatively recently been set up by the academics of the Department. The last article in the monograph has been devoted to personality basis of scientific culture. The following have been attached to the present monograph: a list of graduates, as well as an appendix presenting important historical documents for Katowice cultural studies.The present book offers a cultural study conceptualization of the problems related to Polish research. The authors of the monograph assume that in order to understand the specificity of any institution, it is necessary to consider its activity in the context of other organizational forms and in the perspective of the longest possible period. Therefore, it is vital to embed the history, achievements, and the contemporary times of The Department of the Theory and History of Culture in the context of local conditioning of the humanities, but also, aspectually, to perceive it in the context of the development of culture studies in Poland, and principally to embed it in the structures of Polish academic system in its organizational, research, and didactic scope. This kind of characteristics of the present through the lens of the past allows to recognize and engineer the future.

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