Christopher Garbowski
Biographic Data
| ID | 4248570 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Garbowski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Garbowski |
| SIGNATURE | GARBOWSKI C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4456-2537 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 31 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Love and Social Justice
Blessed Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, Love and Social Justice: Reflections on Society, translated by Filip Mazurczak. Waterloo, On. Canada: Arouca Press, 2021. Pp 554. ISBN: 978-1-989905-90-6. Reviewed by Christopher Garbowski, Professor Emeritus of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland, OPREE Advisory Board
Political Parties and Religion in Post-Communist Poland
A review of Aleks Szczerbiak, Political Parties and Religion in Post-Communist Poland. London and New York: Routledge, 2025. Pp. 226. $142.50. ISBN 978-0367456634
Marsz [The march]
Spiritual History of Poland
A review of Grzegorz Górny, Duchowa historia Polski: Millenium dwu koronacji, 1025-2025 (Warsaw: Rosikon Press, 2016) ISBN: 978-83-62981-46-5
Solidarity
Mity i symbole polityczne Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej [The political myths and symbols of East Central Europe]
Michał Masłowski is a professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris where together with Chantal Delsol and Joanna Nowicki he coedited the book Mythes et symboles politique en Europe centrale (2002). He was also a visiting professor at the Center for East European Studies at the University of Warsaw. It is there that he rewrote and in 2022 published the book in Polish as Mity i symbole polityczne Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej [Myths and symbols of Ea…
The Long and Winding Road through Inner and Outer Trenches of Post-Soviet Europe
Two books, one by an Iranian-born German philosopher writer, another by a Polish reporter, create travelogues that shed a meaningful light on Poland and more or less adjacent countries and territories heavily tried by history and the present. Navid Kermani actually travels through Poland on his circuitous route through post-Soviet countries to the land of his birth, leaving us a thoughtful and quite readable travel diary, as the English publisher…
Community, Solidarity, and John Paul II
Not all that long ago, at the end of the twentieth century (give or take a decade or so), the idea that we were living in a post-secular age was making some headway among those interested in the place of religion in modern societies. The primary evidence was to be found in places such as the United States with its highly religious population and ditto Poland, as well as in a number of post-communist countries where religion seemed to be undergoin…
From Public History to an Identity History for Poland
In 1882, the French historian Ernest Renan gave a succinct answer to the question of what determines the essence of a nation: “A nation has two foundations: a legacy of shared memories and a desire to live together.”1 Today we could add that the desire to live together with a modicum of trust creates the national community,2 whereas the self-determined political community at its base has evolved toward the nation state. Thus, we have the bottom u…
Rafał Lemkin
In the more theoretical part of his Trust: A History, Geoffrey Hosking drew upon sociologists who developed a particular approach to their subject in no small part on account of their having confronted a society governed by distrust. As he put it, “Three modern Central European sociologists who began their lives under Soviet-style socialism were especially sensitive to the high levels of generalized social distrust it generated, and were hence co…
The War in Ukraine and Political Theology in Poland
In the broadest of terms, political theology can be defined as “the analysis of political arrangements (including cultural-psychological, social, and economic aspects) from the perspective of God’s ways with the world.”1 Since the world changes, as do the politics accompanying them, political theology is of necessity a dynamic branch of the theological enterprise. The editors to the second edition of The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political The…
Tamara Łempicka
Tamara Łempicka (1898–1980) is one of those artists whose work crossed the boundary from serious art to popular culture. As a high school student in the early 1970s in Canada, I saw a somewhat experimental play in which her artwork was used for the stage decorations, which proves the surprising popularity of her work. On the serious side, she is often enough recalled by scholars who offer insights into her art along the lines of the critical appr…
The Ukrainian War
This article presents the Polish perspective together with Poland's response to the war in Ukraine. Because the situation is quite dynamic, the report documents the early period, that is, approximately the first half year of the conflict. Social consequences such as the flood of refugees from the war-torn country to Poland are examined, also with a view of how it affected resident Ukrainians at the time. In its position as a North Atlantic Treaty…
Milieux de mémoire in Late Modernity
As the title of the book under review suggests, certain local communities can become milieux de mémoire, or “sites of memory” for a national community. This, at least, is the assertion of the authors, and they look for evidence in Poland, where a number of these exemplary local communities are claimed to exist. Moreover, it is argued these communities are elevated to this status through a top-down process, that is, by the dynamics of national his…
The Constitution of 3 May 1791
Richard Butterwick's opens his book The Constitution of 3 May 1791 with a pithy account of the importance of the eponymous constitution for Poles during the Solidarity movement and its struggle with the communist regime shortly after which he contrasts this with the rather lackadaisical celebration of the holiday in its honor by most people in a currently sovereign Poland. He goes on to high-mindedly stress that “this extraordinary political even…
Dwa światy
Quite fortunately, despite the controversy surrounding him among Poles, Andrei Sheptyts'kyi has his positive moment in Polish culture. In the epic Na wysokiej połoninie [On the high uplands, 1936–1979], Stanisław Vincenz marks the pastoral visit of the bishop of Stanyslaviv to the Hutsuls. The visit is presented from the perspective of the Hutsuls, who adorned it in legendary attire; for instance, the bishop arrives in their region on a white hor…
The Question of Polish Soft Power and Practice of Historical Policy
Book Review| December 01 2021 The Question of Polish Soft Power and Practice of Historical Policy Łukasz Dryblak, ed., Wizerunek Polski w świecie. Idee i działania [The image of Poland in the world. Ideas and actions], (Warsaw: Biuro Bezpieczeństwa Narodowego, 2020), 135 pp., illustrations, bibliographical references. ISBN: 978-83-60846-34-6.Paweł Ukielski, Pamięć Polski, pamięć sąsiadów. Pamięć Europy [Polish memory, the memory of its neighbors.…
The Polish Debate on the House of European History in Brussels
The article presents the development of the House of European History (HEH), a project of the European Parliament which opened in 2017, together with its overall reception, most specifically within Poland. The broader concerns of East Central European countries are examined on the basis of a report published by the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. Finally, the Polish debate on the institution is presented and its significance discussed…
Homo Europeicus , Homo Polonicus
Review Article| December 01 2019 Homo Europeicus, Homo Polonicus: Politically Constrained and Unconstrained Anthropologies and Histories Marek Cichocki, Północ i Południe: Teksty o polskiej kulturze i historii [North and South: Texts about Polish Culture and History], (Warsaw: Teologia Polityczna, 2018), 343 pp. ISBN 978-83-62884-81-0.Michał Gierycz, Europejski spór o człowieka: Studium z antropologii politycznej [The European Dispute Concerning …
Principles of Social Harmony and the Wedding of Political Progress and Tradition
Review Article| April 01 2019 Principles of Social Harmony and the Wedding of Political Progress and Tradition W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz, Harmonia społeczna. Czyli zasady szczęśliwego społeczeństwa [Social Harmony, or the Principles of a Happy Society], (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2017), 234 pp. ISBN 978–83-06-0341-8. Christopher Garbowski Christopher Garbowski Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Christopher Garbowski is associate profe…
Screening Auschwitz
The City as a Lieu de Mémoire
The article discusses historical memory in a municipal community on the example of Lublin with the aid of Pierre Nora’s concept of lieu de mémoire augmented by David Carr’s phenomenological philosophy of history. More specifically, the city’s past is explored as a constitutive element of the present at different levels: from a phenomenological one, through symbolic and self-reflective levels. The phenomenological and symbolic levels of the past w…
Populism and the European Culture Wars
Book Review| October 01 2018 Populism and the European Culture Wars: The Conflict of Values between Hungary and the EU Frank Furedi, Populism and the European Culture Wars: The Conflict of Values between Hungary and the EU, (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). 144 pp. ISBN 978-1-138-09743-8. Christopher Garbowski Christopher Garbowski Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin Christopher Garbowski is associate professor at the Department of En…
Eastern European Narratives and “Meaning Making”
Review Article| July 01 2018 Eastern European Narratives and “Meaning Making” Johan Fornäs, ed., Europe Faces Europe: Narratives from its Eastern Half, (Bristol, and Chicago: Intellect Books, 2017). 252 pp. ISBN 978–1-78320-751-0. Christopher Garbowski Christopher Garbowski Maria Curie Skłodowska University Christopher Garbowski is associate professor in the Department of English at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland. He is the author or c…
Considerations on the Essence of Man / Rozważania o istocie człowieka
Book Review| July 01 2017 Considerations on the Essence of Man / Rozważania o istocie człowieka Karol Wojtyła, Considerations on the Essence of Man / Rozważania o istocie człowieka, translated by John Grondelski (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu and Societa Internazionale Tommaso D’Aquino, 2016), 217 pp. ISBN 978-83-60144-92-3. Christopher Garbowski Christopher Garbowski Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Search for other works by this…
Populism and the European Culture Wars
Book Review| October 01 2018 Populism and the European Culture Wars: The Conflict of Values between Hungary and the EU Frank Furedi, Populism and the European Culture Wars: The Conflict of Values between Hungary and the EU, (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). 144 pp. ISBN 978-1-138-09743-8. Christopher Garbowski Christopher Garbowski Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin Christopher Garbowski is associate professor at the Department of En…
The Polish Debate on the House of European History in Brussels
The article presents the development of the House of European History (HEH), a project of the European Parliament which opened in 2017, together with its overall reception, most specifically within Poland. The broader concerns of East Central European countries are examined on the basis of a report published by the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. Finally, the Polish debate on the institution is presented and its significance discussed…
The City as a Lieu de Mémoire
The article discusses historical memory in a municipal community on the example of Lublin with the aid of Pierre Nora’s concept of lieu de mémoire augmented by David Carr’s phenomenological philosophy of history. More specifically, the city’s past is explored as a constitutive element of the present at different levels: from a phenomenological one, through symbolic and self-reflective levels. The phenomenological and symbolic levels of the past w…
Polin
This article consists of an interview with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, chief curator of the core exhibition of the newly opened POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Among other subjects, the conversation touches on the philosophy underlying the creation of the museum and the way it presents its subject as well as ways in which POLIN differs from others museums of Jewish and Polish history. Its location in Warsaw, both a leadin…
The Analogical Imagination and the Past and Present of Popular Religion in Poland
Research Article| December 01 2011 THE ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION AND THE PAST AND PRESENT OF POPULAR RELIGION IN POLAND CHRISTOPHER GARBOWSKI CHRISTOPHER GARBOWSKI Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Polish Review (2011) 56 (4): 385–406. https://doi.org/10.2307/41549978 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation CHRISTOPHER GARBOWSKI; THE ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION AND THE…
Life as a Journey
The article explores the problem of film’s adaptation of a literary work’s religious sensibility. Although some of the Christian elements of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings remain and others have gained a different emphasis, the author maintains that the spiritual dimension of Jackson’s adaptation is a more promising field for comparison. One of the major narrative metaphors in the literary and film trilogy is life as a journey; consequently, the…
The Analogical Imagination and the Past and Present of Popular Religion in Poland
Research Article| December 01 2011 THE ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION AND THE PAST AND PRESENT OF POPULAR RELIGION IN POLAND CHRISTOPHER GARBOWSKI CHRISTOPHER GARBOWSKI Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Polish Review (2011) 56 (4): 385–406. https://doi.org/10.2307/41549978 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation CHRISTOPHER GARBOWSKI; THE ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION AND THE…
Ale nam się wydarzyło. O papie.u i Polsce, Kościele i świecie [ Were We Ever Lucky
The Glorious Dead and Sacred Communities in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Wajda’s Katyń
Historical memory is one of the keys to strengthening what Anthony Smith calls the “deep cultural resources” of national identity ( Chosen Peoples 5). This article argues that in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan of 1998 and Andrzej Wajda’s Katyń of 2007 a dialogue with sacred cultural resources takes place. Focusing as they do on wartime experiences of Americans and Poles, the historical memory brought to the fore in these films evokes the …
Historical Memory and Debate in Poland and East Central Europe
Review Article| April 01 2015 Historical Memory and Debate in Poland and East Central Europe: A Review Essay Alexander Etkind, Rory Finnin, Uilleam Blacker, Julie Fedor, Simon Lewis, Maria Malksoo, and Matilda Mroz, Remembering Katyn, (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012), xxviii, 185 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5576–5.Zdzisław Krasnodębski, Stefan Garsztecki, and Rüdiger Ritter (eds.), Politics, History and Collective Memory in East Central Europe, (H…
Polin
This article consists of an interview with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, chief curator of the core exhibition of the newly opened POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Among other subjects, the conversation touches on the philosophy underlying the creation of the museum and the way it presents its subject as well as ways in which POLIN differs from others museums of Jewish and Polish history. Its location in Warsaw, both a leadin…
Considerations on the Essence of Man / Rozważania o istocie człowieka
Book Review| July 01 2017 Considerations on the Essence of Man / Rozważania o istocie człowieka Karol Wojtyła, Considerations on the Essence of Man / Rozważania o istocie człowieka, translated by John Grondelski (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu and Societa Internazionale Tommaso D’Aquino, 2016), 217 pp. ISBN 978-83-60144-92-3. Christopher Garbowski Christopher Garbowski Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Search for other works by this…
The City as a Lieu de Mémoire
The article discusses historical memory in a municipal community on the example of Lublin with the aid of Pierre Nora’s concept of lieu de mémoire augmented by David Carr’s phenomenological philosophy of history. More specifically, the city’s past is explored as a constitutive element of the present at different levels: from a phenomenological one, through symbolic and self-reflective levels. The phenomenological and symbolic levels of the past w…
Populism and the European Culture Wars
Book Review| October 01 2018 Populism and the European Culture Wars: The Conflict of Values between Hungary and the EU Frank Furedi, Populism and the European Culture Wars: The Conflict of Values between Hungary and the EU, (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). 144 pp. ISBN 978-1-138-09743-8. Christopher Garbowski Christopher Garbowski Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin Christopher Garbowski is associate professor at the Department of En…
Eastern European Narratives and “Meaning Making”
Review Article| July 01 2018 Eastern European Narratives and “Meaning Making” Johan Fornäs, ed., Europe Faces Europe: Narratives from its Eastern Half, (Bristol, and Chicago: Intellect Books, 2017). 252 pp. ISBN 978–1-78320-751-0. Christopher Garbowski Christopher Garbowski Maria Curie Skłodowska University Christopher Garbowski is associate professor in the Department of English at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland. He is the author or c…
Homo Europeicus , Homo Polonicus
Review Article| December 01 2019 Homo Europeicus, Homo Polonicus: Politically Constrained and Unconstrained Anthropologies and Histories Marek Cichocki, Północ i Południe: Teksty o polskiej kulturze i historii [North and South: Texts about Polish Culture and History], (Warsaw: Teologia Polityczna, 2018), 343 pp. ISBN 978-83-62884-81-0.Michał Gierycz, Europejski spór o człowieka: Studium z antropologii politycznej [The European Dispute Concerning …
Principles of Social Harmony and the Wedding of Political Progress and Tradition
Review Article| April 01 2019 Principles of Social Harmony and the Wedding of Political Progress and Tradition W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz, Harmonia społeczna. Czyli zasady szczęśliwego społeczeństwa [Social Harmony, or the Principles of a Happy Society], (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2017), 234 pp. ISBN 978–83-06-0341-8. Christopher Garbowski Christopher Garbowski Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Christopher Garbowski is associate profe…
Screening Auschwitz
The Polish Debate on the House of European History in Brussels
The article presents the development of the House of European History (HEH), a project of the European Parliament which opened in 2017, together with its overall reception, most specifically within Poland. The broader concerns of East Central European countries are examined on the basis of a report published by the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. Finally, the Polish debate on the institution is presented and its significance discussed…
The Question of Polish Soft Power and Practice of Historical Policy
Book Review| December 01 2021 The Question of Polish Soft Power and Practice of Historical Policy Łukasz Dryblak, ed., Wizerunek Polski w świecie. Idee i działania [The image of Poland in the world. Ideas and actions], (Warsaw: Biuro Bezpieczeństwa Narodowego, 2020), 135 pp., illustrations, bibliographical references. ISBN: 978-83-60846-34-6.Paweł Ukielski, Pamięć Polski, pamięć sąsiadów. Pamięć Europy [Polish memory, the memory of its neighbors.…
Milieux de mémoire in Late Modernity
As the title of the book under review suggests, certain local communities can become milieux de mémoire, or “sites of memory” for a national community. This, at least, is the assertion of the authors, and they look for evidence in Poland, where a number of these exemplary local communities are claimed to exist. Moreover, it is argued these communities are elevated to this status through a top-down process, that is, by the dynamics of national his…
The Constitution of 3 May 1791
Richard Butterwick's opens his book The Constitution of 3 May 1791 with a pithy account of the importance of the eponymous constitution for Poles during the Solidarity movement and its struggle with the communist regime shortly after which he contrasts this with the rather lackadaisical celebration of the holiday in its honor by most people in a currently sovereign Poland. He goes on to high-mindedly stress that “this extraordinary political even…
Dwa światy
Quite fortunately, despite the controversy surrounding him among Poles, Andrei Sheptyts'kyi has his positive moment in Polish culture. In the epic Na wysokiej połoninie [On the high uplands, 1936–1979], Stanisław Vincenz marks the pastoral visit of the bishop of Stanyslaviv to the Hutsuls. The visit is presented from the perspective of the Hutsuls, who adorned it in legendary attire; for instance, the bishop arrives in their region on a white hor…
The War in Ukraine and Political Theology in Poland
In the broadest of terms, political theology can be defined as “the analysis of political arrangements (including cultural-psychological, social, and economic aspects) from the perspective of God’s ways with the world.”1 Since the world changes, as do the politics accompanying them, political theology is of necessity a dynamic branch of the theological enterprise. The editors to the second edition of The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political The…
Tamara Łempicka
Tamara Łempicka (1898–1980) is one of those artists whose work crossed the boundary from serious art to popular culture. As a high school student in the early 1970s in Canada, I saw a somewhat experimental play in which her artwork was used for the stage decorations, which proves the surprising popularity of her work. On the serious side, she is often enough recalled by scholars who offer insights into her art along the lines of the critical appr…
The Ukrainian War
This article presents the Polish perspective together with Poland's response to the war in Ukraine. Because the situation is quite dynamic, the report documents the early period, that is, approximately the first half year of the conflict. Social consequences such as the flood of refugees from the war-torn country to Poland are examined, also with a view of how it affected resident Ukrainians at the time. In its position as a North Atlantic Treaty…
The Long and Winding Road through Inner and Outer Trenches of Post-Soviet Europe
Two books, one by an Iranian-born German philosopher writer, another by a Polish reporter, create travelogues that shed a meaningful light on Poland and more or less adjacent countries and territories heavily tried by history and the present. Navid Kermani actually travels through Poland on his circuitous route through post-Soviet countries to the land of his birth, leaving us a thoughtful and quite readable travel diary, as the English publisher…
Community, Solidarity, and John Paul II
Not all that long ago, at the end of the twentieth century (give or take a decade or so), the idea that we were living in a post-secular age was making some headway among those interested in the place of religion in modern societies. The primary evidence was to be found in places such as the United States with its highly religious population and ditto Poland, as well as in a number of post-communist countries where religion seemed to be undergoin…
From Public History to an Identity History for Poland
In 1882, the French historian Ernest Renan gave a succinct answer to the question of what determines the essence of a nation: “A nation has two foundations: a legacy of shared memories and a desire to live together.”1 Today we could add that the desire to live together with a modicum of trust creates the national community,2 whereas the self-determined political community at its base has evolved toward the nation state. Thus, we have the bottom u…
Rafał Lemkin
In the more theoretical part of his Trust: A History, Geoffrey Hosking drew upon sociologists who developed a particular approach to their subject in no small part on account of their having confronted a society governed by distrust. As he put it, “Three modern Central European sociologists who began their lives under Soviet-style socialism were especially sensitive to the high levels of generalized social distrust it generated, and were hence co…
Art (20 works) · Political science (20 works) · History (18 works) · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies (12 works) · Art history (11 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (11 works)