Humanities in the city : about the activities of Stefania Skwarczyńska

Shaping the relationship between higher education institutions, the field of science and the broader social environment in an industrial city is an important issue. A case of this is Wolna Wszechnica Polska in 1930s, which was in fact the first institution during interwar period opening opportunities for science and humanities in Lodz as a large Polish industrial center. The activity of Stefania Skwarczyńska in those years shows that the styles of theoretical thinking and shaping scientific community in Lodz were in fact different from the academic patterns of an old university centers. They were, however, like the postwar active adult education program conducted by the fathers of British cultural studies in the 1950s and 1960s. The community teachers and researchers in the humanities created at that time will be built from scratch by the University of Lodz after 1945. Skwarczyńska also be built the foundations of the syllabus of cultural studies as a field of study in Lodz from the 1970’s