Recovering Forgotten History
Annual conference: Reclaiming Forgotten History. The image of Central and Eastern Europe in English-language academic textbooks and monographs
About the project
The "Recovering Forgotten History" project was founded in 2006 by Professors Andrzej Sulima Kamiński (Georgetown University) and James C. Collins (Georgetown University).
Its chief aim is to deepen understanding of Poland and its neighbors like Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary and other former Habsburg lands, and how they are presented in English-language histories.
The Museum invites authors and their publishing editors to visit Poland for free as its guests and have their forthcoming books confidentially reviewed at an annual conference each summer.
The Polish History Museum (Muzeum Historii Polski) was a long-term partner before assuming leadership and sponsorship of the program in 2022. Recent conferences have been held in Wrocław, Kraków, and Poznań.
Its chief aim is to deepen understanding of Poland and its neighbors like Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary and other former Habsburg lands, and how they are presented in English-language histories.
The Museum invites authors and their publishing editors to visit Poland for free as its guests and have their forthcoming books confidentially reviewed at an annual conference each summer.
The Polish History Museum (Muzeum Historii Polski) was a long-term partner before assuming leadership and sponsorship of the program in 2022. Recent conferences have been held in Wrocław, Kraków, and Poznań.
I have been involved with the Recovering Forgotten History project for 15 years, watching how Western historians' contribution to Polish historiography has been changing from “exciting but marginal” to “central and pathbreaking”. I wish the same was true for the position of East-Central Europe within historical studies in America and Britain. I'm not sure yet how, but I'm positive ‘RFH’ is going to achieve that goal too.
The unique value of our conference lies in the spirit of discussion and exchange of views. This allows authors, reviewers, and publishers to learn from each other, exploring diverse perspectives. This approach fosters a spirit of solidarity among researchers, who jointly strive to explore the phenomenon of Central European history.
„Being a part of Recovering Forgotten History has enriched my life immeasurably, and my summer trips to Poland over the years have been immensely educational and personally rewarding. This has been a bonus, above and beyond everything the program has given to the authors and manuscripts that received the intensive workshopping that is RFH's hallmark. Collaborating with scholars from the region and spending time with other North American-based editors and authors formed a close intellectual and publishing camaraderie that deepened every year. Traveling to cities throughout the country, not just Warsaw and Krakow, and visiting sites with experts made the histories of places we were discussing as manuscripts even more meaningful. Participating in the workshop has significantly improved numerous OUP books, as well as my ability to acquire titles on and understand more deeply the past and present of Eastern and Central Europe”.
“This conference is one of the most interesting and probably the most effective methods to change the image of Poland and Polish history abroad. As part of this conference, the best historians come to Poland, mainly from Anglo-Saxon countries, who deal not only with the history of Poland, but also the region of Central Europe, and sometimes even the whole of Europe. They talk to Polish historians, and this is a chance to present the Polish point of view, influence the change of opinions and many stereotypes prevailing abroad"