The Department's members conduct courses on the history of 19th-century Polish literature: Romanticism, Positivism and Young Poland, as well as seminars on literary analysis, poetics and degree seminars. The interests of the 19th-Century Literature Department mainly focus on literary and cultural issues related to the 19th century. Their research includes topics such as:

• biography, including women's biographies,
• the life and work of Władysław Reymont, Stanisław Przybyszewski, Ignacy Dąbrowski, and Ludwik Starski,
• the issue of subjectivity in Polish and European modernist prose,
• personal document literature,
• multicultural literature of Łódź,
• Polish-Jewish relations in the 19th and first half of the 20th century,
• Slavophile content present in 19th-century literature,
• 19th-century children's literature,
• issues related to the borderlands,
• morbid discourse and autopathography,
• academic editing.

The department is implementing a grant from the National Programme for the Development of Humanities, entitled Dictionary of Polish Female Authors, Translators and Publishers. Years 1795-1863, under the supervision of prof. dr hab. Dorota Samborska-Kukuć and with the participation of dr hab. Maria Berkan-Jabłońska, prof. UŁ.