Volume
21, Number 3 May 1999
One of our most long-lasting friendships and partnerships with Poland was acknowledged at an award ceremony in February. President Myles Brand presented Warsaw University Rector Wlodzimierz Siwinski with the President's Medal, the highest honor bestowed by Indiana University, in recognition of Professor Siwinski's support of Polish Studies at IU in his twenty years of administrative service, and for the impact he has made on Indiana students and faculty during his several teaching visits here. Wlodzimierz Siwinski served as the Associate Director of Polish Studies (along with Timothy Wiles, Director) in 1984-86, and he taught International Business at that time with Paul Marer (Kelley School of Business). He completes his second, final term as Rector of Warsaw University this semester, after a number of terms in service to his university (earlier, as Director of the American Studies Center, and then, Vice Rector for International Programs). Projects and Specialist Visits
Back to the contentsIndiana University Bloomington was the site of the international conference, "Home/Less: The Polish Experience," held on December 4-5, 1998. The conference, organized by Bozena Shallcross (Slavic Literature, and Associate Director of the Polish Studies Center), was funded by the American Council of Learned Societies and the IU Office of International Programs, REEI, Polish Studies, and the Slavics Department. Conference assistant Jennifer Day, a Slavics doctoral student, provided matchless organizational support for this project over many months.
Seventy five people registered for the conference, with more than 25 participants attending from Poland, Canada, England, Denmark, and other U.S. cities. During the evening before the conference, participants had the opportunity to see an art exhibit entitled "In Transit" by the Polish artist Beata Wehr, who offered commentary on her works, particularly artist's books on the theme of exile and wandering. Recently, she is an instructor at the University of Arizona.
The conference was opened by Dean for International Programs Patrick O'Meara who spoke of the universal nature of homelessness and displacement. This was followed by a keynote address given by Peg Brand (Philosophy & Women's Studies), who discussed the difference between the notion of home and house in the context of postmodernist cultural points of view such as feminism. She also spoke of her personal search for roots in Poland.
Three panels were held on the first day. The first, entitled "Home as Booty and Betrayal," included three papers on the tragedy of Polish Jewry during World War II and the perversion of "home" involved in ghettoization. Speakers included Cynthia Dominik (Warsaw University), Regina Grol (SUNY Buffalo), and Madeline Levine (UNC), who reconstructed the Jewish home in literary testimonies.
The second panel, "Home without Homeland," addressed the Polish Experience in emigration, that is, Poles who carry their "home" with them outside their native country, a dilemma which has been extensively explored in literature. Speakers included David Goldfarb (Barnard), Wlodimierz Bolicki (PAN), and Zdzislaw Mach (Jagiellonian University).
In the third panel, "A Writer's Paradise," the speakers discussed the position of the writer in totalitarian-era Poland, in particular with respect to the phenomenon of the "gift home" or writer's retreat provided to writers who agreed to help the State "construct a new society." Paradoxically, the literature of that time reflected an underlying sense of homelessness and uprootedness experienced both by these same writers, and by Poles in general. Speakers were Marek Zaleski (PAN), Beth Holmgren (UNC), and Henryk Dasko, independent scholar.
The Saturday sessions opened with a major paper by Ryszard Nycz of Jagiellonian University, entitled "Each of Us Is a Stranger: Patterns of Identity in 20th Century Polish Literature." Nycz speculated on the philosophical implications of the sense of homelessness and alienation as a modernist human condition. The fourth panel, "The Place of Dis-integration," considered the notion of home in communist Poland in a broader cultural and urban context, viewed in socio-literary and architectural terms. Speakers were Jerzy Jarzebski (Jagiellonian University), Robert Harbison (University of North London), Katarzyna Zechenter (University of Kansas).
In the fifth panel, "Home on the Stage," the speakers reflected on the problem of home and its loss in Polish drama during and after WWII. Speakers were Tamara Trojanowska (University of Toronto) and Halina Filipowicz (University of Wisconsin). The final panel, "The Post-Totalitarian Home," offered some insights into the tension between the physical concrete structure and "home" as the object of self-identification. These talks, by Magdalena Zaborowska (Aarhus University, Denmark), Bozena Shallcross (IU) and Sven Spieker (UCSB), were enhanced by an impressive array of slides documenting various aspects of the architecture, symbolism, and momnumentality (including Palac Kultury) of the "home" as restored in postmodern times.
The conference speakers and discussants represented some of today's top polonists working in the U.S. and abroad. Their fields of expertise ranged from literary and cultural studies to architecture and interior design to anthropology. They examined the notion of the home (or homelessness, as the case may be) as manipulated by politics, changing ideologies, and history, as well as the vital role that the idea of the home played in the consciousness of Poles and Poland as a whole.
(Editor's note: article by Bozena Shallcross & Jennifer Day, reprinted from International Programs News-letter, February 1999. A volume of the proceedings from this conference is being planned, and it should be a groundbreaking contribution to this interdisciplinary and fundamental subject).
Working in partnership with the Indiana University Press, the Polish Studies Center brought ten publishers from Poland to Bloomington in February to attend a week-long professional workshop devoted to issues of the small press. The team then spent two weeks touring publishing sites in Indianapolis, Chicago and Ann Arbor. Polish Studies Director Timothy Wiles received a grant of $90,000 from the United States Information Agency in support of this project, the Polish Small Press Development Program (PSPDP).
The press support program grew out of concerns that since the fall of communism and the end of censorship, several hundred new small publishing houses have started up, but most of them are severely under-financed, lack professional management particularly in the finance and marketing areas, and need access to electronic technology. Indeed, hundreds of presses have emerged in Poland in the 1990s, but scores of them have also gone under. Jointly with the IU Press, Polish Studies won a grant to inform Polish publishers about economic survival measures for the small press sector, with activities to be conducted in both countries. Following the success of the recent workshop and study tour, Wiles will bring a team of book publishing specialists from several American university press and research venues to Warsaw for a capstone conference in May 1999.
A challenge for the Polish Studies Center was to link the Polish publishers with national organizations, to maintain some lasting institutional ties, as well as expose them to good information sources in the book business. For this program, we cooperated with the Association of American University Presses and the Polish Chamber of Books, involving their executive directors both for planning and for the goal of formalizing an agreement of cooperation between AAUP and the Chamber. Peter Givler, Executive Director, and Robert Faherty, President of AAUP, assisted the Polish Studies Center to plan the program and provided us with invaluable access to American specialists, who all worked gratis for the PSPDP. Likewise, Andrzej Chrzanowski, President of the Polish Chamber of Books, has acted as the program's Poland liaison; he organized the competition to choose eight publishers for the study tour and he made arrangements in Warsaw for the May capstone conference.
Polish Studies would not have had access to so much talent and good will without the partnership of Janet Rabinowitch, IU Press Senior Sponsoring Editor and long-time REEI affiliate, and Director of the Press John Gallman. They organized a day-long tour of all the divisions of the Press for the Polish publishers, and they also provided us with leads to publishers and sites to visit for the study tour. Among the expert presenters whom they helped secure for the February workshop were Patricia Kolb, M.E. Sharpe, Inc., William Lindsay, Harvard University, Robert Faherty, Brookings Institution, Sanford Thatcher, Penn State, and Michael Jensen, National Academy Press. (Michael is a 1980 graduate of the IU English Department and student of Tim Wiles.) Presenters from Poland included Andrzej Chrzanowski, Piotr Szwajcer, CIS popular science publishers, and Dawid Kot, copyright and intellectual property rights legal expert, Jagiellonian University.
Eight publishers from the small press book industry in Poland won competitive grants to visit Bloomington and then tour Midwest region publishing sites. Some are young people quite new to the book business but with a vision about a new venture that might really fly in Poland. Some moved into private publishing from established houses or university presses. Two individuals represented the publishing division of regional cultural organizations, "Borussia" and "Pogranicze," both in northern Poland and both of which represent multi-cultural, multi-linguistic communities which need to see their cultures be "kept in print" (German and Lithuanian speaking minorities, in this case). A diverse and fascinating team, for us it felt like a dynamic and mobile ideal graduate seminar, especially when the team went on the road to Chicago and Ann Arbor!
The visiting publishers were: Maryla Paturalska (Borussia), Agnieszka Szyszko (Osródek Pogranicze); literary publishers Renata Lis (Sic!), Tomasz Majeran (Pomona) and Maria Smolen (Slowo/Obraz Terytoria); Jacek Jatal (Aureus, philosophy publisher) and Agnieszka Kudyba, Wroclaw University Press; and Ariusz Buffi, of Buffi Publishers of art and photography books.
The eight publishers, escorted by two USIA interpreters and local driver/escort Jerry Linton, hit the road on February 4 and toured until their departure from Detroit February 17. On route they visited several independent publishing houses specializing in literary, historical, and regional books similar to the Poles' own book lines (Guild Press, Indianapolis, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, and the Independent Publishers Group, an innovative Chicago distribution company). They also made several extensive tours of editorial and business divisions of the Presses of the University of Chicago, Northwestern and Michigan Universities. We are very grateful to the support of AAUP members who are directors of these presses, Morris Philipson and Donald Collins, Chicago UP, Susan Harris and Nicholas Wier-Williams, Northwestern UP, and Colin Day, Michigan UP.
On the study tour, the Polish publishers also toured two printing facilities of the R. R. Donnelley Company (Crawfordsville and Chicago), the Edwards Printing Company in Ann Arbor, and they toured the Borders Bookstore home office and parent store in Ann Arbor, a fascinating model which might be adopted some day in Poland. And in Chicago, they did not neglect to visit some blues clubs, the Art Institute, Frank Lloyd Wright houses, and other cultural highlights on their tour.
Timothy Wiles met up with the team in Ann Arbor just before their departure for a de-briefing, found them tired but stimulated and eager to take ideas home to Poland. Each of the publishers presented several books from his or her firm to the Polish Studies and IU libraries, and the team will form a nucleus for preparing the concluding PSPDP activity, the country-wide conference for Polish book publishers in Warsaw this May.
Thus far, the PSPDP has been a success and a real source of energy for all of us. As one participant wrote on the final evaluation form: "The meetings made me realize the importance of professionalism in all our publishing activities. In the era of high specialization, it is not enough to have a passion for publishing, it needs to be supported by professional knowledge. It was very reassuring to learn that the American publishers of ambitious books face similar problems to the ones that Polish publishers face. Similarly, Poles and Americans think of their publishing activities not only in the categories of profit, but they treat them as a kind of mission,' for which they often pay the price of losing commercial success. ... Because of my own company's orientation, I found this encounter with the multi-cultural America extremely valuable, and I am sure it is going to affect my work. I would like to express my gratitude for the efficient, professional and friendly organization of our stay in the United States. I felt great being here, thank you very much!"
Back to the contentsSchool of Fine Arts photography professor Jeffrey Wolin was the featured artist at the 56th anniversary observation of the Ghetto Uprising in Warsaw this year (the Uprising began on April 19, 1943, and it was the major sustained revolt of Jews against Nazi annihilation during the Holocaust). Wolin, Director of the School of Fine Arts, received the Polish Studies Faculty Exchange Fellowship to spend several days at Warsaw University, which displayed the exhibition, and to make a photographic tour of sites significant to Polish Jewry. His photographs, a selection from his book Written in Memory: Portraits of the Holocaust, were displayed at the Warsaw University Museum in April 1999, and on April 18, the day on which the Uprising was commemorated this year, Wolin's exhibition was a stop on the official tour of memorial sites made by Holocaust survivors (including Marek Edelman), government and military officials, and academic and cultural leaders. Jeff Wolin accom-panied the entourage to the Ghetto Defenders Monument, the Bunker at Mila 18 in the heart of the former Ghetto, and the Umschlagplatz where transports to the concentration camps took place. Then an audience of several hundred crowded the Warsaw University Museum for a reception and a talk by the artist.
The Polish Studies Center sponsored this exhibition and held negotiations with the WU Museum and other technical staff for over a year to get it presented. We are pleased that an artist's testimony such as this could be showed in Poland, and by its nature, bear witness to suffering and take a stand against racist and antisemitic genocide and neglect of one's fellow-sufferers. Many Poles visited the show and there was strong press and media coverage. Several partners helped us produce the exhibition, including WU Museum Director Tomasz Strączek, Vice Rector Janusz Grzelak, U.S. Ambassador Daniel Fried and Cultural Attache Kate Delaney (who funded the illustrated catalogue), and representatives from the Jewish Foundation of Kraków (Joachim Russek, Director), which will exhibit Wolin's photographs there in January 2000, the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Back to the contentsThree Polish government experts visited IUB on March 24 to discuss Poland's role in politics, trade, and security concerns in the region after NATO enlargement. By chance, their visit and their actual lecture coincided with the onset of NATO air strikes in Yugoslavia due to the crisis in Kosovo. This emergency, which was announced to the public and the visiting diplomats during the question and answer session, became part of the panel discussion. In fact, the military attache on the panel, Piotr Blazeusz, noted that he had worked as liaison officer with the American Army in Bosnia, and commented that a Polish division is ready to take part in peace-keeping duties--a prospect that has become more distant since the day of this discussion.
The panelists billed themselves as a Polish government "think tank," and they were escorted to several Midwestern universities this spring by the event organizer, the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Chicago, represented at the IU visit by Consul Jacek Sawich. The purpose of the tour was to give information and to promote Poland's role in NATO on two adjacent occasions: Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were formally admitted to the Alliance just this spring, and NATO celebrated its 50th anniversary last month (while conducting air strikes against Yugoslavia in aid of the Kosovars).
A prestigious team made up this think tank. It was headed by Dr. Maciej Kozlowski, who until recently was Charge d'Affaires at the Polish Embassy, Washington. He represented Poland in many talks leading to NATO admission. Kozlowski, who lectured at IU on two earlier occasions, was active in independent and underground publishing during the Solidarity Era and served time in prison for smuggling books in the communist period.
Speaking on Poland's business climate and foreign investment picture was Barbara Jarzembowska. She is Vice President of the Polish Agency for Foreign Investment (PAIZ). Lt. Piotr Blazeusz discussed security issues at the symposium. He is a military attache to the Ministry of Defense, and was the first Pole to graduate from the U. S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
Lt. Blazeusz set the tone for the discussion about Poland in NATO in post-communist Central Europe by telling a Polish political joke. One needs to remember that the Soviets' version of NATO was called the Warsaw Pact, named for the city in which this particular defense alliance was imposed on the satellite counties of the Soviet Bloc. And so the joke, in typical riddle fashion asks, "What is the difference between the Warsaw Pact and NATO?" The answer? Warsaw Pact is like a Big Brother, whereas NATO is like a friend. The difference is that you can choose your own friends.
Barbara Jarzembowska began her overview of Poland's business climate by noting that Poland continues to have the fastest domestic growth rate in all of Europe. Many American, German and other European investors are buying into Polish corporations or establishing divisions of their own companies in Poland. These are clustered in the more prosperous western half of the country, or around Poland's largest cities, and the relative underdevelopment of eastern Poland continues to be a problem. The government is addressing this with tax rebates for investments made in eastern Poland. Poland will continue to be a strong market, not only for trade with American and west European companies, but also as a launching-point for business ventures with the countries east of Poland. Poland expects to sell an increasing amount of its manufactures in these countries.
Maciej Kozlowski and Piotr Blazeusz shared the discussion about Poland's political role in Europe and the North Atlantic region since the enlargement of NATO. Kozlowski emphasized that the Poles and political allies of the expanded alliance see Poland's inclusion as a way to remove the "gray zone" on the eastern side of the alliance. This is starting to change the status of Central Europe, so that the former Soviet satellite states would no longer be a buffer zone between Western Europe and Russia, but be a perimeter guaranteeing security for both sides. Kozlowski felt that this would really materialize only if neighboring states such as Ukraine and the Baltic states eventually developed their economies and infrastructure so that they too could join NATO, but he stressed that this would take a long time, and would necessitate major improvements in the Russian economy and political sphere before it could be considered. He also conceded that Belarus would continue to be a problem and probably should be thought of as an extension of the Russian state in political terms. These projections drew quite a lot of scrutiny in discussion with the audience of students, faculty, and several U.S. government and independent policy analysts who attended the symposium. In general, the tenor of the debate left it uncertain whether NATO enlargement (particularly to include a country like Poland with a strong and committed military tradition) would eventually have a meliorative effect or a provocative effect on Russia.
Maciej Kozlowski and Piotr Blazeusz shared the discussion about Poland's political role in Europe and the North Atlantic region since the enlargement of NATO. Kozlowski emphasized that the Poles and political allies of the expanded alliance see Poland's inclusion as a way to remove the "gray zone" on the eastern side of the alliance. This is starting to change the status of Central Europe, so that the former Soviet satellite states would no longer be a buffer zone between Western Europe and Russia, but be a perimeter guaranteeing security for both sides. Kozlowski felt that this would really materialize only if neighboring states such as Ukraine and the Baltic states eventually developed their economies and infrastructure so that they too could join NATO, but he stressed that this would take a long time, and would necessitate major improvements in the Russian economy and political sphere before it could be considered. He also conceded that Belarus would continue to be a problem and probably should be thought of as an extension of the Russian state in political terms. These projections drew quite a lot of scrutiny in discussion with the audience of students, faculty, and several U.S. government and independent policy analysts who attended the symposium. In general, the tenor of the debate left it uncertain whether NATO enlargement (particularly to include a country like Poland with a strong and committed military tradition) would eventually have a meliorative effect or a provocative effect on Russia.
In the immediate moment, however, the Polish military is already doing its job in the European theater. Polish soldiers have already served in Peacekeeping Missions in several countries since 1990, including Haiti and prominently, in Bosnia (where Lt. Blazeusz himself served recently with the American 18th Air Assault Battalion. A dramatic event happened in the middle of our March 24 symposium--in the midst of speculative discussions and audience questions about what the "new NATO" might do, independent policy analyst Michael Holler announced that an hour previously, NATO forces under U.S. leadership had begun bombing Serbian military targets in Yugoslavia, both in Kosovo and Serbia. The first real test of Poland's membership in post-communist-era NATO had begun. From the examples of the political wisdom and the enlightened patriotism of the Polish government spokesmen on this panel, the Indiana University audience could feel confident that America has a good new ally in NATO (along with the Czech Republic and Hungary), and that the Polish involvement will be both thoughtful and committed.
Back to the contentsPawel Wdowik, Rector's Deputy for the Disabled at Warsaw University, spent a week at Indiana University in February as part of a Midwest orientation tour studying services for disabled students. Wdowik, who is blind, also had a practical mission in the U.S. during this visit: he acquired his first seeing-eye dog at a special training school near Detroit, where he trained with the dog for two weeks following his stay in Bloomington.
Pawel Wdowik came to his position as a doctoral student in Psychology and as a student who had been involved for some time in organizing activities and services for the handicapped. He visited IU on an exchange for administrative staff at Warsaw University which is funded by the office of President Myles Brand.
Pawel Wdowik came to his position as a doctoral student in Psychology and as a student who had been involved for some time in organizing activities and services for the handicapped. He visited IU on an exchange for administrative staff at Warsaw University which is funded by the office of President Myles Brand.
In charge of Wdowik's visit in the Dean of Students Office was Steve Morris, Director of Disabled Student Services and Veterans Affairs. Morris prepared a full program of meetings for Wdowik, including a discussion on learning disabilities with Lynn Flinders at IUB, and at IUPUI, talks with Director of Adaptive Educational Services Pamela King and Associate Director Timothy Anno. At IUPUI he also toured the learning laboratory in the Library which is equipped with modified computers, monitors, scanner-readers, and voice-generated Internet facilities--some of which are already available in Poland, Wdowik reported.
Back to the contentsSeveral IU specialists in Polish politics and public administration held discussions with the head of a leading Polish policy analysis institute on April 11-13, when Dr. Bogdan Klich visited campus as part of a research tour. He is Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Kraków, an independent political research center which advises the Polish government. Appointed as a 1999 Eisenhower Exchange Fellow, Klich was funded for two months to visit American universities and research centers to study the U. S. approach to global problems and issues, such as the development of a new structure of global security, and to investigate how American research institutes are structured and funded (including university based institutes).
Klich's institute in Kraków studies a variety of questions, each with its own research team. Subjects include Poland in the European Union; Poland's eastern policy; forms of co-operation among Central European countries; democracy in Poland and in the world; financial market in Poland and in the world; the new shape of European security; the dynamics of development of civil society in Poland and in the world.
Just prior to coming to Bloomington, Klich attended the University of Michigan conference on "Communism's Negotiated Collapse: The Polish Roundtable, Ten Years Later." He had been informed about this event by the IU Polish Studies Center Director, and Klich was able to offer IUB students his own analysis both of the Roundtable itself, and his critique of the way it has been canonized in the memory of some of the Polish Solidarity leaders who participated in the Michigan conference. In Ann Arbor he argued against Adam Michnik that it was the definitive originating point for hands-on democracy in Poland; Klich would locate this much earlier, with the formation of Solidarity itself, a much more broad-based experience.
While in Bloomington, Bogdan Klich met with directors of several programs and talked extensively with Jack Bielasiak (Political Science) and his graduate students. He discussed the way IU academic and research centers are put together with Brian Winchester (Center for the Study of Global Change), Roy Gardner and Denise Gardiner (Russian and East European Institute), and David Jones (School for Public and Environmental Affairs).
Back to the contentsMary McGann (Director of Warsaw University American Studies Center, 1981-83) represented Indiana University at a noteworthy anniversary conference at Kent State University, Ohio, in February. Kent State is celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of its exchange with Warsaw University this year (IU celebrated its 20th in 1996). Poland has the distinction of being the first country with which Kent negotiated an international exchange agreement, twenty years ago. Since then, the program has grown extensively under direction of Dean Mark Rubin. McGann, Professor of English at the University of Indianapolis, spoke about the value of international exchange in fostering a global vision among students and faculty at midwestern universities. Warsaw University was represented at this anniversary conference by several prominent faculty and administrators who have ties with IU, including the university's rector Wlodizmierz Siwinski, Professor of Law Lech Garlicki (keynote address), Michal Rozbicki (St. Louis University), and Krzysztof Michalek, Director, WU American Studies Center.
Elizabeth Lee Roby, Slavic Languages and Literatures, is the recipient of the IU Graduate Student Exchange Fellowship with Warsaw University for 1999-2000. Lee has also been a very popular instructor of Polish language in recent years. Her research will concern the film works of the late master of Polish cinema, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and will support her doctoral dissertation in progress, "From Absurdity to Humanism: The Development of Kieslowski's Existential Thought." Lee organized a series of film showings this semester that featured the whole ten-part series of Kieslowski short films The Decalogue, based on the Ten Commandments. It was a highlight of the film season in Bloomington, drew numerous visitors, and because of the fundamental ethical questions raised by these films, the series provoked much meditation and discussion.
Adam Ehrlich, doctoral student in History, has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Poland for graduate research in 1999-2000. He will work in several research institutes in Warsaw, Krakow and Silesia, and conduct field research pertaining to his dissertation in progress, titled "Between Poland and Germany: the Search for Autonomous Space and the Construction of National Identity in Upper Silesia."
An article by Timothy Borden, "The Salvation of the Poles': Working-class Ethnicity and Americanization Efforts during the Interwar Period in Toledo, Ohio" has been accepted for publication in Polish American Studies. Borden will defend his doctoral dissertation on this subject in the History Department later this summer.
Brian Arden, a graduate of the Master's Degree program of the Russian and East European Institute, writes that he thinks of us often and hopes to visit us when he is back in the States. He is currently working for a government contractor in the Republika Srpska (Banja Luka), as Creative Director for the USAID Privatization Project. He hasn't had a chance to visit Poland on this trip yet--he spent a year there three years ago on the PSC exchange, studying the Lemko--but he will try to visit Poland this spring. Friends, write: bardan@inecco.net
Elizabeth Coughlan, who holds a doctorate from IU in Political Science with emphasis on Polish politics, writes that she has been promoted and tenured at Wright State University in Ohio; however, she has accepted a position at Salem State College in Massachusetts for Fall 1999.
Lynn Lubamersky, who holds a doctorate from IU in History and wrote a
dissertation about women political figures in 18th Century Poland, writes
that she got a job as visiting Assistant Professor at New Mexico State
University in Las Cruces, and began work on January 13, 1999. "Good
news!" Lynn announces, noting that "after 1 ˝ years it will become a
tenure-track position, so I'm very excited." My own congratulations to
all these grads and students on their achievements.