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Introduction
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Introduction The seven related articles in this volume of Indiana Slavic Studies doubly counter the dominant focus in Polish Studies scholarship on "Literature penned by Great Men." Other scholars have complemented the vast criticism devoted to canonized -ewicz's (Mickiewicz, Sienkiewicz, R6zewicz) with analyses of women's writing; such works as Grazyna Borkowska's monograph Alienated Women: A Study of Polish Women's Fiction, 1845- 1918 (2001) and the collection Women in Polish Society (1992), edited by Rudolf Jaworski and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, exemplify this important contribution.! The recent volume Gender and Sexuality in Ethical Context: Ten Essays on Polish Prose (2005), edited by Knut Andreas Grimstad and Ursula Phillips, combines studies of female and male artists, although, as its subtitle makes clear, all of its essays train on verbal texts2 Our anthology turns the spotlight elsewhere-on the careers, works, and reception of Polish women in the visual and performing arts. The subject of our collection, in both senses, is the Polish woman who has stolen the show-on stage, screen, canvas, and in the media. In chronological coverage, our essays span the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Beth Holmgren's historical analysis of the public/professional lives of Polish stage actresses (Helena Modjeska, Maria Wisnowska, Gabriela Zapolska) in the late nineteenth century to Andrea Lanoux's critical review of the diverse Polish-language women 's magazines that proliferated in Poland during the 1990s. Between these endpoints, Bozena Shallcross limns the innovative psychologized portraiture of painter Olga Boznanska (1865-1940); Elzbieta Ostrowska ! Grazyna Borkowska, Alienated Women: A Study of Polish Women's Fiction, 1845- 1918, trans. Ursula Phillips (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2001); Rudolf Jaworski and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, eds., Women in Polish Society (Boulder, CO and New York: East European Monographs, Columbia University Press, 1992). 2 Knut Andreas Grimstad and Ursula Phillips, eds., Gender and Sexuality in Ethical Context: Ten Essays on Polish Prose, Slavica Bergensia 5 (Bergen, Sweden: Department of Russian Studies, University of Bergen, 2005). Helena Goscilo and Beth Holmgren, eds. Poles Apart: Women in Modern Polish Culture. Bloomington, IN: Siavica, 2006, 3-9. (Indiana Slavic Studies, 15. ) 4 Helena Goscilo and Beth Holmgren examines the provocative cinematic career of Poland's premier screen star, Krystyna Janda (b. 1952); Maria Makowiecka delineates the transgressive multimedia art of the award-winning postmodernist Ewa Kuryluk (b. 1946); and Helena Goscilo fathoms the anti-diva selffashioning and currency of the operatic contralto Ewa Podles (b. 1952). Halina Filipowicz's essay-afterword to the collection advocates and theoretically elaborates what the preceding entries effectively deploy -a "particularist" methodology that evaluates Polish women's works within the context of their historical experience, cultural traditions , and sociopolitical pressures. All of the essays necessarily problematize gender and address female creativity from its perspective while examining the nexus of complex issues confronted by highly visible female professionals in an unavoidably politicized context: namely, the devaluation or diffusion of gender politics in a "minor" country obsessed with national oppression ; and the consequent professional allure and commercial peril of international models and opportunities for training, exhibition, performance , and promotion. Nation before Gender As Filipowicz argues, we cannot presume women's universal subordination even in nineteenth-century Polish society. The public reputation of such heroic women as Emilia Plater, a soldier in the national cause, surely coexisted with the pervasive archetype of the good Polish mother (matka polka), the pinnacle of virtuous self-sacrificing womanhood . Yet, as several essays in this volume inexorably demonstrate, social sanction for a Polish woman's rebelliousness and enterprise depended on her patriotic service and applied to specific sorts of public action. The struggle for national solidarity and sovereignty dominated Polish life and sociopolitical thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-throughout the partitions (1795-1918), when the country was more or less occupied by the imperial powers of Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary, and in the postwar era of the People's Republic of Poland, when the nation remained under Soviet control. This struggle empowered women to expressly serve the nation-as teachers, writers, activists, and, in some exceptional cases, soldiers. But this struggle also prescribed local loyalty and a compliant"offstage " behavior that particularly handicapped exhibiting and performing female artists. Shallcross notes that even women painters in [44.204.164.147] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:50 GMT) Introduction 5 nineteenth-century Paris were restricted in terms of their subjects and engagement with human models. Yet the Polish artist Boznanska faced further prohibitions at home...