DRESS-BOY AND THE GLOBAL HISTORY OF COTTON IN THE 19TH/20TH CENTURY

The dress-boy and the global history of cotton in the 19th/20th century

In her story, the presenter will combine two (nomen-omen) threads: the folk history of Poland and the global history of cotton. The first one tells about the great social change that began in Polish lands with the abolition of serfdom (at different times in different conquests), and whose heroes and heroines are peasants and peasants undertaking migratory efforts: from the countryside to the industrial city or across the ocean. The change of residence and lifestyle was accompanied by a change of dress; this modern one was usually woven in large part from cotton. This fabric of emancipation was at the same time the result of post-slave, semi-slave labor, an element of the global economy. The boat of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was one of the links of a huge network stretching from the plantations of the American South to the lands of Central Asia and Transcaucasia.

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Małgorzata Litwinowicz-Droździel is a professor at the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw, researcher of the history of Polish and Lithuanian culture at the turn of the 20th century. Among her books, an important place is occupied by a work devoted to Reymont and, among others, to Łódź cotton: Change, which was not there. Three attempts to read Reymont (Warsaw 2019).

https://ikp.uw.edu.pl/bio/dr-malgorzata-litwinowicz-drozdziel/

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When: 14.11.2026/16:00

Where: Conference room on the first floor of the building with cash register

Admission: [TICKETS]

Other events accompanying the exhibition “Nine moons over the cotton field. The boat and Central Asia” [here].