University of Silesia in Katowice

Highlights:

• The project investigates how smokestacks and smoke function as symbolic elements in cultural narratives about industrial and post-industrial urban transformation.
• It explores the relationship between urban space, air quality, and environmental change through an eco-critical lens.
• The research analyzes representations of industrialization in cultural texts across time to understand societal and artistic responses to urban transformation.

Profits you get being a member of T4EU PhD Tracks:

• The opportunity for close and daily collaboration and experience-sharing with international researchers working in a similar field.
• The chance to share findings and receive feedback within a broad, international community.
• Expanding horizons, experiencing different cultures and work styles, and developing skills, including language proficiency.

Project description:

The project focuses on the ecological cultural narrative regarding the memory of transformation during the industrial and post-industrial eras. The goal of the research is to demonstrate how images and descriptions of smokestacks, air and smoke in cultural texts have become a source for reconstructing narratives of transformation in industrial and post-industrial periods. Using an eco-urbanist perspective, it analyzes cultural texts from different periods to show how society, citizens, and artists reacted to industrial landscapes and how attitudes toward them have evolved.