Nathan Wood

Professor Wood (Ph.D. Indiana University, 2004) is intrigued with the ways that East Central Europeans have grappled with the challenges and opportunities stemming from industrialization and urbanization, especially during the overlapping periods commonly known as “The Age of Great Cities” (c. 1840–1939) and “The Age of Speed” (c. 1885–1939). His first book, Becoming Metropolitan: Urban Selfhood and the Making of Modern Cracow (Northern Illinois University Press, 2010) explores press representations of the city in the early twentieth century, including attitudes toward urban expansion, electric streetcars, automobiles, airplanes, and big-city crime and filth. His current book project, “Backwardness and Rushing Forward: Cycling, Motoring, and Aviation during Poland’s Age of Speed, 1885-1939,” investigates the attitudes of early adopters, enthusiasts, journalists, the public, avant garde artists, and the nationalizing state toward bicycles, automobiles, and airplanes from their introduction until WWII. Supported by grants from Fulbright-Hays, Fulbright, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the International Research Exchange (IREX), among others, Wood has published articles on topics ranging from urban self-identification in East Central Europe to the interaction between the public and the press regarding a sex-murder in Cracow in 1905.