present a lecture by

KAZIMIERZ  P. BRAUN

American and Polish Theatre: Mutual Influences, Similarities and Differences

Monday, October 12th at 12:30 p.m.
Indiana Memorial Union – Sassafras Room

Kazimierz Braun of SUNY-Buffalo is an exceptional figure in the field of international theatre and drama. One of Poland’s best-known and most accomplished theatre directors at the time of his departure from Poland in 1985, since coming to the United States he has established himself here as a major director, playwright, scholar and teacher. With decades of experience both in Europe and North America, he is ideally placed to make important connections between theatrical traditions across the two continents. Professor Braun’s talk will outline the major connections between Polish and American theatre traditions, emphasizing the numerous and lasting mutual influences both have shared, the commonalities, and also the major differences between them.

REBIRTH OF POLISH DEMOCRACY:
A TWENTY YEAR RETROSPECTIVE

A POLISH STUDIES CENTER SYMPOSIUM
Friday, September 18th, 2009
8.30 am – 12 pm & 1.30 pm –5 pm
Indian Memorial Union – Maple Room

Schedule:
8:30 Gathering in Maple Room
8:45 Welcoming remarks by Patrick O'Meara, Vice President for
International Affairs
9:00-12:00 Panel I: Political Transformations

Presenters: Andrzej Rychard, Polish Academy of Sciences
Padraic Kenney, Indiana University
Daniel Cole, IU School of Law, Indianapolis
Greg Domber, University of North Florida
Commentary by Regina Smyth, Indiana University

1:30 Prof. Marek Konarzewski, Embassy of the Republic of Poland: "Global
Climate Change: the Polish Perspective"

2:00-5:00 Panel II: Transformations in Society and Culture

Presenters: Mira Rosenthal, Indiana University
Daniel Bishop, Indiana University
Anna Zachorowska-Mazurkiewicz, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Justyna Beinek, Indiana University
Commentary by Bill Johnston, Indiana University

Polish Studies Center Picnic

to welcom friends of the Polish

Studies Center to a new academic year

Saturday, September 12, 2009

12:00 - 3:00 p.m.

HENDERSON SHELTER, BRAYAN PARK

intersection of Henderson Street and E. Allen Street

~near Basketball Courts~

Please bring a dish to share: salads, meats (there will be a ready grill),

side dishes, deli items, desserts, etc.

All picnicware will be provided, including cups, plates,

forks, knives, napkins and ice, as well as non-alcoholic beverages.

Polish dishes are highly appreciated if you are able.

ALL ARE WELCOME!

PLEASE COME!

Lecture

Thursday, April 23rd at 12:00 p.m.
at the Polish Studies Center

Marek Łaziński

Pan, pani and human vanity.
The need for an universal title in Polish forms of address.

Marek Łaziński is visiting professor at Humboldt University in Berlin and lecturer in the Institute of Polish Language at the University of Warsaw; he has been a member of the Management Board of the National Corpus of Polish since 2008. He has authored numerous books including Dystynktywny słownik synonimów, O paniachi panach, Polskie rzeczowniki tytularne i ich asymetrie rodzajowo-płciowe, Słownik nazw miejscowości i mieszkańców z odmianą and Słownik zapożyczeń niemieckich w polszczyźnie. His research interests include the verbal aspect in Polish, Polish forms of address, grammatical gender in Polish and its asymmetry for sex, corpus linguistics, grammar of Polish as a foreign language and sociolinguistic changes.

CONCERT

Sunday, April 19th, 5 pm
Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center
Indiana University Bloomington
275 North Jordan Avenue

Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto with “The Pianist”
Holocaust Remembrance Day Concert
Sunday, April 19, 2009      5 p.m.

Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center
Indiana University Bloomington
275 North Jordan Avenue

Edward Auer, piano
Junghwa Moon Auer, piano
Brian Arreola, tenor
Kasia Bugaj, viola
ChingYi Lin, violin
Halina Goldberg, narration

The concert commemorates Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) through the musical legacy of Władysław Szpilman, best known in the United States for his wartime memoir and the film “The Pianist” that was based on it.  Performances will run the full range of genres composed and performed by Szpilman, from popular song, through operetta repertory, to solo piano and chamber music.

The concert is free, but we encourage a donation for the benefit of the impoverished, elderly Righteous Gentiles, specifically Polish Gentiles who helped save Jews during the Holocaust.  A call for such help came recently from the Children of the Holocaust in Poland, an association of Holocaust survivors who at the outbreak of the Second World War were 13 years of age or younger, and who are now in their 70s, struggling to continue to provide aid to the Righteous Gentiles as they have in the past. For more information see http://www.dzieciholocaustu.org.pl

The patronage for this event is provided jointly by the Polish Studies Center and Congregation Beth Shalom in Bloomington.

Lecture

Friday, April 10th, 4:30p -5:30p
Fine Arts 102

Dr. Anna Brzysk

Art History Burke Lecture Series: Dr. Anna Brzyski, University of Kentucky "Who is Contemporary and Who is Not: Historiography and Modernism in East Central Europe"

Polish Film Series
Spring 2009
Sponsored by the Polish Studies Center

All showings will be at 7:30 pm
 Wylie Hall, Room 05, on the IU Bloomington Campus
All films are in Polish with English subtitles.  Free and open to the public.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4
Theatre of the 8th Day / Portiernia (80 min.)

In November, Theatre of the 8th Day – Poland’s legendary avant-garde theater group – came to Bloomington on their first-ever (in more than 40 years!) U.S. tour. If you were there, you’ll want more. If you weren’t, find out what you missed. The program includes a short excerpt from their 2004 production Visitors’ Reception (Portiernia) – a breathtaking commentary on post-communism – and a documentary (Theater of the Eighth Day) on the group. In Danish and Polish with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11
The Reservation (Rezerwat)
2008, dir. Lukasz Palkowski (100 min.)

The Reservation follows a young freelance photographer as he gets tangled up in the underside of nouveau-riche Warsaw. Even for a savvy Pole, the other side of the river is a culture clash, and seems like a journey back to another time. A warm, bittersweet comedy.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY18
Katyn (Katyń)
2007, Andrzej Wajda (118 min.)

Katyn describes the tragedy of a generation, as seen by Poland’s most acclaimed film director. The film follows the story of four Polish families whose lives are torn apart when, at the outset of WWII, thousands of Polish soldiers (who are also fathers, husbands and brothers) fall into the hands of Soviet troops and, in April 1940, are massacred by Stalin’s police. The film also explores the complicated circumstances of Poland's position both in the war and after.
Special presentation to benefit the Polish Studies Center; donation suggested

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25
Tricks (Sztuczki)
2007, Andrzej Jakimowski (95 min.)

From the director of Squint Your Eyes (Zmruż oczy, 2002), this film introduces Stefek, a young boy living in Poland’s rustbelt with his sister Elka and his mother. His father left some time ago, and Stefek believes he can manipulate his fate, and that the man he has glimpsed at the train station is really his father.

A play by: The Theatre of the 8th Day
"The Files"

Thursday, November 13th, 7.30pm
Friday, November 14 th, 7.30 pm
Saturday, November 15th, 2.30pm (polish language version) and 7.30pm

John Waldron Arts Center
122 S. Waldron Arts Center
Bloomington, IN 47408

To buy tickets on line go to:
http://www.bloomingtonarts.info/Public/Calendar/performance.asp?PerfID=22121

The Files, directed by Ewa Wójciak and Marcin Kęszycki, the founders and directors of the Theatre of the Eighth Day, premiered in Poznan, Poland, on January 10th, 2007, and was recognized by critics as one of the most important performances of the last few years.

The Files is a special and unusual performance for the Theatre of the Eighth Day (famous for fighting the regime only through art), because it uses Secret Police reports on the Theatre’s actors written during the period from 1975 to 1983 (reports that by definition also covered the actors’ contacts, friendships, and meetings), juxtaposed with the actors’ private letters at the time the reports were written, as well as parts of old performances to which the reports referred. For the sake of clarity and because the reports were so voluminous, the company decided to narrow the action of the play to the 1970s, since that was when they were active only as artists. (Later, in the 80s, they began to be more directly active in politics.). The inspiration for this play was their discovery of a typical report on one of their earlier plays that was written by a Secret Police officer from Crakow, whose intellectually over-ambitious analysis of the play’s subversive tendencies was so grotesquely uncomprehending that it was hilarious. 

SPONSORED BY:

The College of Arts and Humanities Institute

Polish Cultural Institute

&

Polish Studies Center

Agnieszka Graff Lecture

“Our Innocence, Foreign Perversions: Gender and Sexuality in Polish Nationalist Discourse"

Thursday, November 13th  at 4:00 p.m.
Indiana Memorial Union -  Persimmon Room

“Our Innocence, Foreign Perversions: Gender and Sexuality in Polish Nationalist Discourse.” This lecture will explore how nationalist discourse in contemporary Poland is not only gendered, but also overlaid with ideas of domestic purity threatened by a decaying West. Agnieszka Graff is one of the best-known writers on issues of gender and feminism in Eastern Europe, thanks to her ability to present them in clear and engaging – and provocative – prose. This talk will be quite accessible to students interested in questions of gender politics, as well as to students interested in Poland and Eastern Europe; both are quite numerous at IU.

SPONSORED BY:
INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDIES
POLISH STUDIES CENTER
Horizons of knowledge
The Russian and East European Institute
Gender studies

Michal Heller - Student Gathering
Thursday, Novembrer 6th, at 9 a.m.
Polish Studies Center

Student Gathering at Polish Studies, Nov. 6 On Thursday, Nov. 6, the Polish Studies Center is entertaining Michal Heller, the physicist and theologian who is this year's winner of the Templeton Prize: http://www.templetonprize.org/bios.html. We are hosting a breakfast encounter at the Center for students (undergraduate and graduate) ONLY on Thursday, Nov 6, at 9AM. This is a rare opportunity to meet one of Poland's most distinguished thinkers in an informal setting. We'll provide bagels and coffee. We ask only that you let us know that you are hoping to come (so we don't run out of bagels), and that you take a peek at the website. I also have a 12-page article on Heller's life and thought which I can send to anyone interested.

A Horizonts of Knowledge lecture by Dr. Robert Blobaum
Eberly Professor of History, West Virginia University

“A Warsaw Story: Polish-Jewish Relations in the First World War”

Thursday, September 24th at 5.00 pm
University Club of Indiana University
Faculty Room

Spy scares, accusations of profiteering and speculation, suspicions that the Jews had privileged access to ever-scarcer food and public assistance, and anti-Jewish boycotts: Warsaw in World War One seemed ripe for a pogrom, like the one that wracked Lwow in November 1918. Yet a pogrom did not happen - why not?

Sponsored by: The Polish Studies Center and The Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program, Horizons of Knowledge, with the support of the Department of History and the Russian and East European Institute.

Polish Studies Annual Picnic

Saturday, September 13, 2008 12:00-3:00pm
Bryan Park Woodlawn Shelter
(intersection of Woodlawn Street and E. Southdowns Drive)

Our annual potluck gathering to welcome friends of the Polish Studies Center to a new academic year.

Please bring a dish to share: salads, meats (there will be a ready grill), side dishes, deli items, desserts, etc, as well as a non-alcohoic beverage. All picnicware will be provided, including cups, plates, forks, knives, napkins and ice. Polish dishes are highly appreciated if you are able.

Jakub Tyszkiewicz Lecture

“U.S. Policy Toward Gomulka’s Poland (1956-1970)”

Thursday, March 20th at 5:30pm

Faculty Room, University Club, Indiana Memorial Union

The Polish October of 1956, the political “thaw” started in Warsaw, was not only a turning point in the history of communist-ruled Poland but also the beginning of new times in Polish-American relations. United States policy toward Poland changed dramatically after that time. Washington stopped viewing Poland as a part of Soviet-related matters, as it had during the Stalinist period and launched completely new activities toward the new communist ruler in Warsaw – Władysław Gomułka. In the long term such a policy would make it possible to diminish Soviet supremacy and allow the Polish nation to live on the independent and free country. Jakub Tyszkiewicz will present the main aims of U.S. policy toward Poland and the attitude of the U.S. government toward situation in Poland in 1956-1970  

Jakub Tyszkiewicz is an adjunct professor in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst .  He is also Professor of History at the University of Wroclaw, Poland.

Benjamin Paloff Lecture

“Intersubjectivity and Its Discontents, or: How to Make Fun of Witold Gombrowicz”

Thursday, February 28th at 5:30pm, Ballantine Hall, Room 242

This presentation, which draws on select issues from his current book manuscript, addresses Witold Gombrowicz’s emphasis on intersubjective relations as the basis of Being. A persistent concern throughout Gombrowicz’s prose, the ways in which one person or thing is inevitably bound to another, appears as a simultaneously comic and tragic consequence of existence and, in generic terms, the common foundation of comedy and tragedy.

Benjamin Paloff is Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Polish Film Series

All showings will be at 7:30 pm in Swain Hall East, Room 105, on the IU Bloomington Campus
All films are in Polish with English subtitles.
Free and open to the public.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21 - CHANGED TO MARCH 20!
I Am (Jestem)
2005, dir. Dorota Kedzierzawska (93 min.)
In this award-winning film of sparse dialogue and rich, evocative imagery, a resolute 11-year-old boy finds a “home” on a deserted old barge after running away from an orphanage and being rejected by his mother. Teetering between the realm of childhood and the often cold adult world, the runaway orphan meets a girl who helps him understand who he is.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28
Warsaw (Warszawa)
2003, dir. Dariusz Gajewski (104 min.)
Winner of five Golden Lion awards at the Festival of Polish Feature Films in Gdynia, Warsaw is a film with many storylines, all of which play out during 18 hours of a single day in winter. In an attempt to renew and reignite their lives, a few strangers arrive in a cold, gloomy metropolis on the same day. They pass each other in the streets without noticing, until nightfall, when they are brought together…

THURSDAY, MARCH 6
Palimpsest
2006, dir. Konrad Niewolski (85 min.)
The psychological thriller Palimpsest tells the story of Marek, a police investigator assigned to solve the intricate murder of his friend, a fellow detective. As the case unfolds, we enter the depths of Marek’s deteriorating mind, forcing us to ask: “What is real and what is illusion?”

Polish Studies Conference

April 17th - 20th, 2008

With a plenary speech by Clare Cavanaugh

For more information, go to: http://www.indiana.edu/~polishst/conference%202008.shtml

Polish Studies Center Christmas Party

You are invited to our annual holiday potluck!

Tuesday, December 4th, 6:00 to 8:00 pm

Leo R. Dowling International Center

111 South Jordan Avenue, Bloomington

Come and celebrate the holiday with the sharing of the oplatek (Christmas wafer) and the singing of Polish Christmas carols. Please bring a dish to share. The Center will provide ham, turkey, dinner rolls, soft drinks, and all dinner ware. Wine can also be brought to share and will be served by a bartender.

Lecture by Andrew Nagorski

Andrew Nagorski, a senior editor at Newsweek International and long-serving correspondent in Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin and elsewhere, is visiting IU to talk about his latest book: The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II.

The lecture is at 5.00 pm on Tuesday, October 30 in the Dogwood Room of the Indiana Memorial Union.

Mr. Nagorski is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has reported from Warsaw, Rome, Hong Kong, Washington, Bonn and Berlin, he served two tours as Moscow bureau chief. After only fourteen months, his first tour was cut short in 1982 by the Soviet authorities who, angered by his enterprising reporting on a broad range of sensitive topics, expelled him “for impermissible methods of journalistic activities.” He served his second tour in the mid-1990s, and has visited Moscow regularly since then.

The European Union and Transatlantic Policies

a roundtable with: Philippe Moreau Defarges (French Institute of International Relations), Józef Niznik (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Warsaw), Jim Rollo (University of Sussex), John McCormick, moderator (IUPUI)

Wednesday, September 26, 2007 12:00-1:30 pm Woodburn Hall 218

The European Union Center of Excellence at Indiana University is pleased to announce its first Roundtable on Transatlantic Policies for the 2007-08 year. Participants include:

Philippe Moreau Defarges, Senior Research Fellow at the French Institute of International Relations (IFri), specializes in European affairs and global governance. He is also co-director for IFri's annual publication, RAMSES, and has worked in several departments at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Józef Niznik, Professor in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, is Head of the European Studies Unit and the Jean Monnet Professor in the Graduate School for Social Research of the Institute. Since 2000, he has been a professor in the Department of International Relations of the Collegium Civitas in Warsaw.

Jim Rollo, Professor of European Economic Integration at the University of Sussex, is co-director of the Sussex European Institute and co-editor of the Journal of Common Market Studies. Previously, he was a senior economic advisor to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.

John McCormick (moderator) is Chair of the Department of Political Science at IUPUI. His latest book, The European Superpower, argues that the rise of the European Union has created political and economic competition between itself and the United States.

This roundtable is co-sponsored by the European Union Center of Excellence, West European Studies, Department of Political Science, Russian and East European Institute, the Polish Studies Center, the International Studies Program, and the Center for the Study of Global Change.

Poetry Reading with Tomasz Rozycki and Mira Rosenthal

Thursday, September 27, 2007 at 5:00pm
The University Club, Faculty Room at the Indiana Memorial Union

Horizons of Knowledge, The Polish Studies Center, The Russian and Eastern European Institute, and the Creative Writing Program invite you to a bilingual poetry reading with Tomasz Rozycki and Mira Rosenthal. They will be reading from The Forgotten Keys (Zephyr Press, 2007).

Polish poet Tomasz Rozycki is the author of six books of poetry and has received numerous awards in Poland. His work has been translated into many European languages. The Forgotten Keys, a selection from five of his collections, marks his English debut. His most recent book, Colonies, is shortlisted for the 2007 Nike Prize, Poland's top literary honor.

The translator Mira Rosenthal is a doctoral student in the Department of Comparative Literature at IU. She has been a Fulbright Fellow to Poland and edited a special issue of Lyric Poetry Review on new Polish poetry in translation. Her work has appeared in the journals Ploughshares, AGNI Online, American Poetry Review, and Notre Dame Review, among others.

Polish Studies Annual Picnic

Saturday, September 8, 2007 12:00-3:00pm
Bryan Park Woodlawn Shelter
(intersection of Woodlawn Street and E. Southdowns Drive)

Our annual potluck gathering to welcome friends of the Polish Studies Center to a new academic year. Please bring a dish to share: salads, meats (there will be a ready grill), side dishes, deli items, desserts, etc, as well as a non-alcohoic beverage. All picnicware will be provided, including cups, plates, forks, knives, napkins and ice. Polish dishes are highly appreciated if you are able.

Polish-German Post/Memory: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics
April 19-21, 2007
Conference to be held at Indiana University (Bloomington)
For a direct link to the conference program, click here.
Pictures from the Conference

Adam Michnik
Lecture: “Poland and Germany: The Return of Bad Memories ”

Thursday, April 19 – 3:30pm
at the IMU, Dogwood Room

Adam Michnik is the Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw, Poland,and Visiting Professor of History at Princeton University.

George Gasyna
Lecture: "Burning Man: On the Optics of Suspicion"

Tuesday, April 3 – 5:30pm
in Ballantine Hall, Room 214

George Gasyna is assistant professor of Polish and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois, and writes on continental modernism, postmodernism, and exilic literature. He is currently researching the Polish avant-garde of the interwar period. Abstract of "Burning Man: On the Optics of Suspicion"

Karen Kovacik
Lecture: “Between Warszawa and Chicago: Recent Poems by Karen Kovacik”

Thursday, March 29 – 7:00pm
at the Polish Studies Center

Karen Kovacik is Director of Creative Writing at IUPUI. She's the author of several collections of poetry, most recently “Metropolis Burning” (Cleveland State University, 2006). Her poetry and fiction have appeared widely in such journals as Glimmer Train, Chelsea, Indiana Review, and Massachusetts Review. She was recently awarded the Charity Randall Citation for poetry in performance from the International Poetry Forum. In 2004-05, she held a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Warsaw, Poland to work on translating contemporary women poets.

Thursday, March 8 - Film Series
We're All Christs (Wszyscy Jestesmy Chrystusami) - 2006
Directed by Marek Koterski, Starring Marek Kondrat and Andrzej Chyra Adas Miauczynski is a frustrated highbrow who tells us about the hell which his family was given because of his addiction to alcohol. Each episode refers to religion but an alcoholism portrayed without mythological romanticism in Koterski’s film compares grotesque with Christ’s martyrdom.
110 mins

All films will be shown in Swain Hall East, Room 105 at 7:30 p.m.
Films in Polish with English subtitles. Admission Free.

Thursday, March 1 - Film Series
The Debt Collector (Komornik) - 2005
Directed by Feliks Falk, Starring Andrzej Chyra
48 hours from the life of a ruthless debt collector. His despotism, nonchalant and arrogant attitude towards the debtors led to tragic events. He later tries to repair the damage but unfortunately, his enemies take advantage of the careless move he made. Worse, people he tried to compensate will not help him...
93 mins

All films will be shown in Swain Hall East, Room 105 at 7:30 p.m.
Films in Polish with English subtitles. Admission Free.

Thursday, February 22 - Film Series
Jasminum - 2006
Directed by Jan Jakub Kolski
Director/writer Jan Jakub Kolski's fairy tale takes place in a monastery whose residents are merrily discombobulated by the arrival of a single mother charged with restoring the religious paintings. The restoration expert and her young daughter know a few things about mixing scents, and eventually they learn the secret of the lingering jasmine odor driving everybody crazy in the vicinity of the monastery.
103 mins

All films will be shown in Swain Hall East, Room 105 at 7:30 p.m.
Films in Polish with English subtitles. Admission Free.

Justyna Wlodarczyk
Lecture: "Translating Ideology: Anti-Choice Strategies as America's Export Product to Poland"

Wednesday, February 21 - 5:30pm
Place - TBA

Justyna Wlodarczyk is a Polish Fulbrighter from Warsaw University who is currently at the University of Indianapolis, where she is working on her doctoral dissertation in contemporary American Literature.

Zemsta / Revenge
Reading from the English version of the play followed by a screening of the film

Tuesday, January 16, 2007 5:30-7:00pm at The Polish Studies Center

Fall 2006

Polish Studies Annual Picnic

Saturday, September 9, 2006 12:00-3:00pm
Bryan Park Woodlawn Shelter
(intersection of Woodlawn Street and E. Southdowns Drive)

Our annual potluck gathering to welcome friends of the Polish Studies Center to a new academic year. Please bring a dish to share: salads, meats (there will be a ready grill), side dishes, deli items, desserts, etc, as well as a non-alcohoic beverage. All picnicware will be provided, including cups, plates, forks, knives, napkins and ice. Polish dishes are highly appreciated if you are able.

Professor Hanna Gosk
Lecture: "Narrating Everyday Life in Polish Prose of the Late 20th and Early 21st Century"

Thursday, September 14th - 5:30pm
at The Polish Studies Center

Professor Hanna Gosk is a visiting faculty member from Warsaw University,
where she teaches at the Institute of Literature, Faculty of Polish Philology.

Piano Recital by Joanna Lawrynowicz
Thursday, September 21 at 8:00pm
in Auer Hall, Bloomington

Joanna Lawrynowicz is a doctor of music at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw. She appeared in public for the first time at the age of five in the Warsaw National Philharmonics. The artist is the winner of four international competitions: The Steinway and Sons Competition for Young Pianists (Berlin 1990), The International Chopin Competition (Darmstadt, Germany 1999), The International Piano Competition of Halina Czerny-Stefanska in Ajigasava (Japan 2000) and The International Piano Competition "Art Livre" in Sao Paolo (Brazil 2001).

Event co-sponsored by IU's Young Pianist program and The Jacobs School of Music

Professor Halina Goldberg
Lecture: "Phrase structure of Chopin's early works in light of Józef Elsner's instruction"

Friday, September 29th - 12:30pm
Simon Music Center, Room 267

Halina Goldberg is an assistant professor of musicology at the Jacobs School of Music. Her main research interest is the music of Chopin, while she has a general interest in the music of Poland and Eastern Europe. She is the editor of The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries (2004) and the author of Music in Chopin’s Warsaw (2005).

Professor Bozena Shallcross
Lecture: "Situating the Holocaust Object"

Wednesday, November 29th - 5:30pm
Ballantine Hall, Room 004

Bozena Shallcross is an Associate Professor of Polish Language and Literature in the Slavic Department at The University of Chicago. She works in the area of 20th century Polish literature and the visual arts; her other interdisciplinary research interests include the “thing” discourse, as well as the interrelationship between questions of identity and the home.

Spring 2006

Solidarity 25 Years Later
April 20 – 21, 2006

Opening Reception
Sponsored by the Office of International Programs
Thursday, April 20, 2006
7:30 – 9:00pm
IMU University Club

Friday, April 21, 2006
10:00am – 4:00pm
IMU Sassafras Room

10:00am
Introductory Remarks: Jaroslaw Lasinski, Consul-General of the Republic of Poland

10:15am – 12:15pm
“Solidarity: A Retrospective”
Jack Bielasiak, Indiana University – Political Science
Konstanty Gebert, Gazeta Wyborcza
Irena Grudzinska Gross, Boston University
Chair: Jeff Isaac, Indiana University – Political Science

2:00 – 4:00pm
“New Research Perspectives on the Solidarity Period”
Eva Cermanová, Indiana University – History
Greg Domber, George Washington University – History
Ania Muller, Indiana University – History
Chair: Owen Johnson, Indiana University – Journalism

Please join this group of outstanding scholars and activists for a thought-provoking discussion that will revisit the meaning and legacies of the Polish Solidarity, the workers’ union that helped topple the workers’ state.

This event is sponsored by the Polish Studies Center, Horizons of Knowledge, the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program, the Office of International Programs, the Russian and East European Institute, and the Department of Political Science.

Dr. Kris Van Heuckelom
Lecture: “The Idolatrous Booke: Bruno Schulz on Text and Image.”

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
5:30pm in Ballantine Hall, Room 242

Dr. Kris Van Heuckelom, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago and Assistant Professor of Polish at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, will give a lecture and a slide presentation on the Modernist Polish-Jewish writer and artist, Bruno Schulz (1892-1942): “The Idolatrous Booke: Bruno Schulz on Text and Image.”

The Writer Uprooted:
A Conference on Contemporary Jewish Exile Literature

March 22-24, 2006
at the IU Bloomington campus

Event hosted by The Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program.
If you would like to know about the conference schedule or lectures,
please call Melissa Deckard at (812) 856-6014 or email mdeckard@indiana.edu.

Marek Chodaczynski
and The Impossible Theatre from Poland

March 3, 2006
5:30pm at the Polish Studies Center (1217 E. Atwater Ave.)

Marek Chodaczynski, the director of The Impossible Theater from Warsaw, Poland, will perform a 10-minute play "Balaam or the Problem of Objective Fault," based on a philosophical tale by Prof. Leszek Kolakowski (Oxford). He will also show a filmed version of another tale from the same cycle, "God or the Relativity of Misericordia," and will talk about his award-winning alternative puppet theater for adults.
All events are in Polish with English translation.

Series of New Polish Films

Thursday, February 23:
Vinci - 2004
Directed by Juliusz Machulski. Starring Robert Wieckiewicz, Borys Szyc, and Kamilla Bar. An immensely enjoyable comedy thriller from Seksmisja and Vabank director Machulski, Vinci tells the story of an elaborate plan by a (mostly) likeable bunch of rogues to steal Poland’s best-known painting—Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine, which hangs in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków. Or does it?...
105 mins

Thursday, March 2:
The Wedding (Wesele) - 2004
Directed by Wojtek Smarzowski. Starring Marian Dziedziel and Tamara Arciuch.
This award-winning black comedy from first-time director Smarzowski
offers a hilariously jaundiced portrayal of a small-town wedding.
When Kasia and Janusz marry at a lavish wedding, wheeler-dealing nouveau-riche relatives,
crooked officials, and city mobsters all want a piece of the action.
110 mins

Thursday, March 9:
My Nikifor (Moj Nikifor) - 2004
Directed by Krzysztof Krauze. Starring Jerzy Gudejko, Krystyna Feldman,
Lucyna Malec, and Artur Steranko.
Krauze’s visually captivating, psychologically profound film depicts the unlikely relationship
between Nikifor, the famous naive artist from Krynica,
and painter Marian Wlosinski. Featuring a brilliant gender-bending performance
by eminent Polish actress Krystyna Feldman in the role of Nikifor.
100 mins

All films will be shown in the Radio-TV Center, Room 251 at 7:30 p.m.
This building is in the southwest corner of the main library parking lot.
Films in Polish with English subtitles. Admission Free

Professors Jerzy Jarzebski and Michal Markowski
Horizons of Knowledge Lectures

Monday, February 6, 2006
5:30pm in Ballantine Hall, Room 004

Two distinguished Professors from Jagiellonian University will give guest lectures.

The first, by Professor Jarzebski, is titled:
"Objects Inscribed with History: The Case of Contemporary Polish Prose"

The second, by Professor Markowski, is titled:
"A Short History of Stones: Polish Poetry and the Real"

Event co-sponsored by the Horizons of Knowledge, Russian and East European Institute,
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Office of International Programs,
and the Polish Studies Center

Professors Jerzy Jarzebski and Michal Markowski

Tuesday, February 7, 2006
5:30pm at the Polish Studies Center

Two distinguished Professors from Jagiellonian University will give guest lectures.

The first, by Professor Markowski, is titled:
"Literature Meets Media, or How Polish Culture Politicizes Itself"

The second, by Professor Jarzebski, is titled:
"Cultural and Literary Life in Today's Poland"

Event co-sponsored by the Horizons of Knowledge, Russian and East European Institute, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Office of International Programs, and the Polish Studies Center

Larry Wolff -- Horizons of Knowledge Lecture

February 21, 2006
6:30pm in the Lilly Library Lounge

Distinguished History Professor from Boston College will give a guest lecture titled:
"Searching for the Saharan Oasis: Galicia in the Age of Metternich and Fredro."

Event co-sponsored by IU's College Arts and Humanities Institute, Cultural Studies, Russian and East European Institute, West European Studies, and the Polish Studies Center

The Writer Uprooted:
A Conference on Contemporary Jewish Exile Literature

March 22-24, 2006
(details - TBA)

Event hosted by The Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program

Fall 2005

Polish Studies Center Christmas Party

Friday, December 9th from 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Leo R.Dowling International Center
111 South Jordan Avenue, Bloomington

Come and celebrate the holiday with the sharing of the oplatek (Christmas wafer), the sharing of a meal, and the singing of Polish Christmas carols.

Please bring a dish to share. The Center will provide ham, turkey, dinner rolls, soft drinks, and all dinner ware. Wine can also be brought to share and will be served by the bartender.

Book Launch and Reading
for three new publications by IU faculty and students

Wednesday, November 9th at 7:00pm
at the Faculty Room (Room 250) in the IMU

"The Black Seasons" by Michal Glowinski
translated by Marci Shore (IUB)
published by Northwestern University Press

Special issue of "Lyric" magazine
devoted to Polish poetry
edited by Mira Rosenthal (IUB)

"White Magic and Other Poems"
by Krzysztof Kamil Bacznski
translated by Bill Johnston (IUB)
published by Green Integer

Event co-sponsored by The Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program

Recital by New Concept Trio
Thursday, November 3rd at 7:00pm
at Recital Hall

Polish musicians Katarzyna Bakowska (violin), Anna Sawicka (cello), and Marzena Buchwald-
Rozyczka (cembalo) will play a combination of baroque and 20th century Polish and Hungarian music.

Event co-sponsored by The School of Music

Polish Coffee Hour Every Thursday
4:30-6:00pm

Hosted by our Graduate Assistant, Mira Rosenthal.
She welcomes your ideas for topics and activities.
The Polish Coffee Hours will be held every Thursday at 4:30 during the semester.
The first Coffee Hour of the academic year will be September 15th.
Cookies, tea, and coffee will be provided.

Polish Studies Annual Picnic

Saturday, September 10, 2005 12:00-3:00pm
Bryan Park Woodlawn Shelter
(intersection of Woodlawn Street and E. Southdowns Drive)

Our annual potluck gathering to welcome friends of the Polish Studies Center to a new academic year.

Please bring a dish to share: salads, meats (there will be a ready grill), side dishes, deli items, desserts, etc, as well as a non-alcohoic beverage. All picnicware will be provided, including cups, plates, forks, knives, napkins and ice. Polish dishes are highly appreciated if you are able.

Spring 2005

Polish Coffee Hour Every Thursday
4:30-6:00pm

Hosted by our Graduate Assistant, Kinga Skretkowicz-Ferguson.
She welcomes your ideas for topics and activities.
The Polish Coffee Hour will be held every Thursday at 4:30 during the semester.
Cookies, tea, and coffee will be provided.

A lecture by Dr. Tomasz Basiuk

"The LGBTQ Movement in Poland Today and the
Case of the Poster Campaign of 2003"

Tuesday, February 15 at 7:00 pm
Sassafras Room of the Indiana Memorial Union
Indiana University Bloomington Campus

The post-1989 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Questioning movement in Poland has had little visibility until recently, when adjustments for Poland’s accession into the European Union occasioned more open discussion of LGBTQ rights. In 2003, anti-homophobic posters using the slogan “Let them see us” were used in a grass-roots campaign which marked a turning point for the movement but provoked immediate backlash.

Tomasz Basiuk is Assistant Professor at the American Studies Center at Warsaw University. He spent 1990-91 as an exchange scholar at Indiana University. He teaches courses in American literature, postmodern fiction and theory, gay and lesbian writing, and queer theory. He co-edited a collection of essays on queer studies in 2002, A Queer Mixture: Gender Perspectives on Minority Sexual Identities (in Polish, with Dominika Ferens and Tomasz Sikora, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Slask.) He is spending the current academic year at the CUNY Graduate Center (Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies) as Fulbright Scholar.

Sponsored by the Polish Studies Center and the Office for GLBT Student Support Services

Polish Film Series

Thursday, February 17: Zurek (Sour Soup) 2003, Directed by Ryszard Brylski

Based on the story by Olga Tokarczuk, this film tells the dramatic tale of a woman's struggle to discover the identity of her grandchild's father. Starring Zbigniew Zamachowski, Katarzyna Figura, and Natalia Rybicka.

Thursday, February 24: Zycie Jako Smiertelna Choroba Przenoszona Droga Plciowa
(Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease) 2000, Directed by Krzysztof Zanussi

Tomasz, a sixty-year-old doctor, suspects that he has a fatal disease. The tests prove he is right. Tomasz is an atheist, but the closeness of death makes him think about the meaning of life and death. The answer - or a sign - is given to him in a hospital room. Starring Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Krystyna Janda, and Pawel Okraska

Thursday, March 3: Zmruz Oczy (Squint your Eyes)
2002, Directed by Andrzej Jakimowski

This is a beautifully understated comedy about a spirited ten-year-old girl who has run away from her proudly affluent parents in town and finds safe haven on a derelict communal farm where her former teacher is watchman. Starring Zbigniew Zamachowski, Malgorzata Foremniak, and Andrzej Chyra.

All films are in Polish with English subtitles.
All showings will be at 7:00pm at Swain Hall East, room 105
729 E. 3rd. St. Bloomington

Horizons of Knowledge
Lecture by Keely Stauter-Halsted

‘Women about Whom One Does Not Speak:’ Prostitution and the Articulation of a National Public Space in 19th Century Poland

Friday, March 25, 12:00 noon
Ballantine Hall room 005

In the half-century before World War One, the Polish lands witnessed intense public discussion over the future of regulated prostitution. Journalists, law enforcement officials, doctors, and members of Poland’s growing feminist movement expressed outrage at the flagrant solicitation of commercial sex in public spaces throughout Polish territory. A series of well-publicized white slavery trials focused attention on the plight of young women duped into following mostly Jewish traffickers to foreign ports, where they were imprisoned in brothels and harems. This presentation looks at the ways in which debate over Poland’s domestic and international sex served as a prism through which to articulate competing futures for a unified Polish nation. Professor Stauter-Halsted examines the range of public attitudes on the prostitution question in divided Poland at the turn of the 20th century and demonstrates that the contemporary treatment of sex workers as innocent victims allowed publicists to sidestep more fundamental social ills driving women into the practice of commercial sex.

Keely Stauter-Halsted is Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University. She is the author of The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Rural National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848-1914 (Cornell University Press 2001), winner of the Orbis 2002 Prize for outstanding book on Polish affairs. The Polish Studies Center at Indiana University 1217 E. Atwater Avenue, Bloomington, Indiana 47401 www.indiana.edu/~polishst

Presented by The Polish Studies Center, The Department of History, and The Russian and East European Institute


Indiana University Roundtables on Post-Communism Presents:

GENDER AND FEMINISM UNDER POST-COMMUNISM
An International Conference

March 31- April 3, 2005

The conference will focus on the development of feminism and the impact of feminist theories on the reshaping of gender roles in public policies, representations, and social and cultural practices in Eastern Europe, Russia, and China since 1989.

Sponsored by the Russian and East European Institute, the Polish Studies Center, the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center, the Center for the Study of Global Change, the East Asian Studies Center, the West European Studies Center, the Office of International Programs, the Humanities Institute, and the University Graduate School.

The conference will bring to campus ten prominent international scholars who will speak on four panels: "Economic and Social Justice Issues," "Representations," "History and Myth," and "Public and Private Spheres."

Faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students, as well as the public at large are encouraged to attend

See the conference web site: www.indiana.edu/~reeiweb/events/2005/roundtables05.htm

Thursday, April 21, 6:00pm
The Lilly Library Lounge, 1200 E. 7th Street, Bloomington

Continued (Wesleyan University Press, 2005) is a selection of poems by Piotr Sommer, spanning his career to date. A kind of poetic utterance, these “talk poems” are devoid of any singsong quality yet faithfully preserve all the melodies and rhythms of colloquial speech. Events and objects of ordinary, everyday life are related and described by the speaker in a deliberately deadpan manner. Yet a closer look at the language he uses, with all its ironic inflections and subtle “intermeanings,” reveals that the poem’s “message” should be identified more with the way it is spoken than with what it says. The poems in this volume were translated into English with the help of other notable poets, writers, and translators, including John Ashbery, D.J. Enright, and Douglas Dunn.

“Piotr Sommer is the great poet of ‘everyday loneliness, contrary to your self, perhaps.’ Like Frank O’Hara, whom he has translated into Polish, he is on the lookout for what he calls ‘improper names’—the very ones that allow us to construe the unkempt and taciturn world that surrounds us.” — John Ashbery

A reception and book signing will follow. Copies of Continued, will be available for purchase.

Fall 2004

Polish Studies Center Picnic
September 11, 12:00 to 3:00

Bryan Park Woodlawn Shelter
(Woodlawn Street at Sheridan near Bryan Park Pool in Bloomington)

Please bring a dish to share: salads, meats(there will be a ready grill), side dishes, deli items, desserts, etc, as well as a non-alcoholic beverage.

Polish dishes are highly appreciated if you are able.

All picnic ware will be provided, including cups, plates, forks, knives,napkins and ice.


Meet the Warsaw Village Band at the Polish Studies Center
Buffet Reception on Friday, Sept. 17, 12:00pm

Please join us to welcome these Polish musicians to Bloomington.

The Warsaw Village Band is Coming to the Lotus Festival September 16 & 17

Supported by the Polish Studies Center

Winners of the BBC3 2004 World Music Award for best Newcomers

This internationally recognized Polish band revives traditional music of Poland, like the “bialy glos” (white voice) singing of the highlands and the 16th century suka fiddle, and blends it with contemporary electronic techniques to produce something new - a genre they call hardcore folk.

“ ...masterly performed, imbued with a youthful enthusiasm that revitalizes you on every listen and manifests why it still means something to be searching for music all over the land, instead of being content to listen to mainstream pop.” – Nondas Kitsos, Rootsworld   For ticket information see the Lotus Festival web site.

A Celebration of the Life and Work of Czeslaw Milosz
Thursday, September 30th, 7:00 pm

Please join us for readings of his work and a reception.

Czeslaw Milosz passed away in August at the age of 93. Milosz was a towering figure in Polish letters, a major presence in world literature, and winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature.

To celebrate the work of this outstanding individual, the Polish Studies Center is holding this informal reading of his poetry and prose. Readings will be given in both English and Polish.

In the Federal Room of the Indiana Memorial Union

Presented by the Polish Studies Center and the Office of the Chancellor

A Witold Gombrowicz Centenary Celebration
November 4th, 5th and 6th

This year has been named the "Year of Gombrowicz" in Poland in honor of his birth in l904. We join the celebration of this renowned writer with three events:

Thursday, Nov. 4: A reading of the play The Marriage
Audience participation is optional, but enjoyment is guaranteed.
6:00pm at the Polish Studies Center
Coffee, tea, and dessert will be served.

Friday, Nov 5: A lecture on Gombrowicz by visiting Professor Grzegorz Jankowicz
and readings by Bill Johnston from his new translation of Bacacay
6:00pm at the Lilly Library Lounge
1200 E. 7th St. Bloomingon
Followed by a reception

Saturday Nov. 6th: A new film of Pornografia
Based on the novel of Gombrowicz and directed by Jan Jakub Kolski
In Polish with English subtitles
7:00pm at Swain Hall East, room 105
729 E. 3rd. St. Bloomington

Presented by the Polish Studies Center
All events are free and open to the public

Two Lectures by Boguslaw Winid
Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Poland, Washington D.C.

November 17th and 18th

Wednesday, November, 17th:
"Polish-American Relations after NATO and EU Enlargement"

7:30 pm in the Dogwood Room of the Indiana Memorial Union
A reception will be following.

Thursday, November 18th:
"The Plunder of Poland's Art Treasure During the Second World War and the Restitution Efforts"

10:00 am in Room 004, Ballantine Hall


Dr. Winid, historian and political scientist, has written extensively on Polish-American relations, NATO, and currently on the World War II era plunder of art, books, and archival documents and on Poland’s efforts since l989 to recover them. He has been Deputy Ambassador at the Embassy of Poland in Washington D.C. since 2001. Previously he was director of the North American Department in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Polish Studies Center Christmas Party
Please come to our annual holiday potluck.

December 9th, 5:00-7:00 pm
At the Leo R.Dowling International Center
111 South Jordan Avenue, Bloomington

Come and celebrate the holiday with the sharing of the oplatek (Christmas wafer) the sharing of a meal and the singing of Polish Christmas carols.

Please bring a dish to share. The Center will provide ham, turkey, dinner rolls, soft drinks, and all dinner ware. Wine can also be brought to share and will be served by the bartender.

Spring 2004

THE GOOD, BAD, AND THE VENGEFUL:
NEW POLISH FILMS:

Thursday February 26:
Hi, Teresa (Czesc, Tereska) 2002. Directed by Robert Glinski. Starring Aleksandra Gietner and Zbigniew Zamachowski. 86 mins.

Thursday March 4:
The Career of Nikos Dyzma (Kariera Nikosia Dyzmy) 2002.
Directed by Jacek Bromski. Starring Anna Przybylska, Cezary Pazura, and Andrzej Grabowski. 105 mins.

Thursday March 11:
Revenge (Zemsta). 2002.
Directed by Andrzej Wajda. Starring Roman Polanski, Daniel Olbrychski, Andrzej Seweryn, Janusz Gajos, and Katarzyna Figura.
100 mins.

All films will be shown in Fine Arts 102 at 7:00 p.m.
Films in Polish with English subtitles. Admission Free

March 6:

Lecture by Grazyna Jonkajtys-Luba

“The Fate of Poles Deported to the Soviet Union during the Second World War”

At the Polish Studies Center, 1217 E. Atwater Avenue
2:00pm.

Please note that this lecture will be in Polish

March 26:
“Poles, Jews, and the Problems of a Divided Memory”
A lecture by Antony Polonsky

Woodburn Hall
Friday, March 26th
2:00 PM

Antony Polonsky is currently the Albert Abramson professor of Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Brandeis University. Polonsky has earned numerous honors, awards, and fellowships throughout his career and has published extensively. He is the author of Politics in Independent Poland: The Crisis of Constitutional Government, The Little Dictators: The History of Eastern Europe since 1918, and The Great Powers and the Polish Question, 1941-45.

The debate provoked by the publication of Jan Gross’s book Sasiedzi: Historia zaglady zydowskiego miasteczka (Sejny, 2000) and its English translation Neighbors: the Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne (Princeton University Press, 2001) has been the most prolonged and far-reaching of any discussion of the Jewish issue in Poland since the Second World War. It is also probably the most profound examination of any social issue since the end of the communist regime in 1989 and the establishment of a pluralistic and democratic political system. Antony Polonsky, editor of a volume devoted to this controversy, will examine its nature and describe the positions adopted by the various participants. The debate, acrimonious and bad-tempered as it has sometimes been, is a necessary stage in the creation of the democratic and pluralistic Poland. It is part of a reckoning with the past long delayed by the negative impact of communist censorship and taboos. The issues it raises are echoed in many other European countries and have a wide significance in a world in which large numbers of national groups and states are struggling to come to terms with the difficult aspects of their past.

This event is co-sponsored by the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Center, and the Russian and East European Institute.

April 2:
Reckoning with the Communist past: The Case of Poland
A lecture by Andrzej Paczkowski

Distinguished Alumni Room, Indiana Memorial Union
Friday, April 2nd
10:00 AM

Andrzej Paczkowski is Professor at the Institute for Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, where he also is a member of the Board of the Institute of National Remembrance. His most recent publication is The Spring Will be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom, (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003). He serves as editor of Intermarium: an Online Journal of East Central European Postwar History and on the editorial board of the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies. He co-authored, with Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Karel Bartosek, and Jean-Louis Margolin, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (1999).

Followed by a reception and book signing of his recent book, The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom

April 2-3:

Conference:
Public Opinion About the EU in East-Central Europe
Speakers include:

Jack Bielasiak (IU-Bloomington, Political Science),
Krzysztof Jasiewicz (Washington and Lee University),
and Radoslaw Markowski (Institute of Political Studies, Warsaw).

Co-sponsored by the Polish Studies Center.

April 16:

Horizons of Knowledge with The Polish Studies Center, The Department of History and The Russian and East European Institute present a lecture by:

Prof. Timothy Snyder
Yale University
The First Cold War: Polish Espionage in Soviet Ukraine, 1928-1933

Friday April 16, 4:00pm Ballantine Hall room 005

After 1926, when a coup d’état returned Józef Pilsudski to power in Poland, the Polish foreign ministry and army began plans to exploit the national question in propaganda and intelligence competitions with the Soviet Union. Between 1928 and 1933, Polish and Ukrainian agents organized diplomatic espionage, border crossings, and sabotage on a considerable scale. These actions, heretofore completely unknown to scholars, seem to have played a role in Stalin's justifications for policies of show trial, famine, and terror in Soviet Ukraine.

Fall 2003:

September 6:
Annual Get Acquainted Potluck Picnic

At Bryan Park
Located in the large shelter nearest the pool
(5 blocks south of campus on Woodlawn at Southdowns)

Saturday, September 6, 2003
Noon – 3:00 p.m.

This will be a potluck picnic. Please bring a main dish or dessert to share, and your own beverages. Polish dishes are most welcome but not mandatory. If you do not cook, please come anyway! Chips, cookies or deli items are welcome also. Cups, plates, napkins, utensils and charcoal will be provided. Please note: Alcoholic beverages are NOT allowed at Bryan Park.

Nathan Wood
Tuesday, September 23rd
4:00 PM Ballantine Hall 233

“We’ll make ourselves into Europe!”
The Creation of “Wielki Kraków” and the Discourse of “European” Modernization

Popular press coverage of the creation of Wielki Kraków (Greater Cracow)—the incorporation of outlying communities into a single administrative unit that took place from 1910 to 1915—reveals that the fundamental issue was the creation of a modern, “European” city. As one suburban mayor put it: “Bedzie z nas Europa!” (We’ll make ourselves into Europe!). Notwithstanding Cracow’s storied reputation as the “Polish Athens,” nationalist rhetoric proved less convincing in justifying Greater Cracow than the discourse of “Europeanization”—with its attendant consideration of practical urban amenities like paved roads and streetlights. While there was certainly popular support for its creation, the mass circulation press also demonstrates that there were strong feelings of resentment and discontent regarding Greater Cracow, especially among the citizens of the suburban communities who stood to lose their independence.

In its rhetorical marshalling of the term “Europe” and in the array of attitudes toward incorporation, the discussion of the creation of Greater Cracow a century ago has a strange resonance with the debate over European Union expansion today. Wood’s talk, based on a chapter of his dissertation, will acquaint the listener with the salient issues of the creation of Greater Cracow. He hopes that his presentation will spur a discussion with members of the Polish Studies Center and IU community about parallel attitudes today regarding EU expansion, the ideal of “European civilization,” local, national, and pan-national identities, and the vicissitudes of modernity in Eastern Europe. Witajcie!

Memorial for Tim Wiles
Saturday, October 11, 2003
2:00 PM
Ruth N. Halls Theatre in the Theatre and Drama Center

This summer, the Polish Studies Center community was shocked and deeply saddened by the news of Tim Wiles' tragic death. Tim had a long and memorable history with the Center; he served as Director from 1983-1986 and 1991-1999, and he continued to be a member of the Advisory Committee.

On October 11, 2003, a memorial service will be held to commemorate Tim's remarkable life. The service will be held at 2 pm at the Ruth N. Halls Theatre in the Theatre and Drama Center on the Bloomington campus.

Speakers will include Professor Wlodzimierz Siwinski, former Rektor of Warsaw University, as well as Tim's colleagues and students from Indiana University and the Bloomington community.

Play Reading
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
7:00 PM
Polish Studies Center

The Polish Studies Center invites you to an evening of Polish comedy!

Please join us in an informal reading of two of Slawomir Mrozek's short plays: The Police and The Martydrom of Peter Ohey; participation is optional, but enjoyment is guaranteed.

Mrozek was one of Tim Wiles' favorite writers; this reading will be dedicated to Tim, who first came up with the idea of Polish play readings at the Center, and who was a staunch supporter of our previous meetings.

We'll meet at the Center on Wednesday, October 22 at 7 pm; tea, coffee and cookies will be provided.

This is a great way to get to know Poland's most outstanding contemporary playwright and satirist, and also to meet some of the Polish Studies Center community. Come along!

Through Foreign Eyes:
An American Photographer in 1980's and 1990's Poland
A talk and slide show by Dennis Chamberlin

Thursday, November 6
Ballantine Hall 109
7:30 PM

Photojournalist Dennis Chamberlin will talk about and show some of his photographs made during the 1980's and 90's in Poland.

Dennis first visited Poland during Martial Law and began work on a documentary photo project that turned out to be more involved than he first thought. In 1986 he made a decision to move there, sold all his belongings (except for a bagful of cameras) and immersed himself in the culture of the country. Six years, and many rolls of film later, ZNAK publishers in Kraków published his photographic album depicting life in Poland during the last decade of Communism in the country. He continued to photograph and document the changes in the country for 15 years until he and his family moved to Bloomington last year.

Jacek Wozniakowski wrote that Dennis photographed Poland "through eyes that are sympathetic, often friendly and even affectionate, but always observing us with the same degree of perceptiveness, sometimes with amusement, and as it were with discretion." His work "is a marvelous document which may tell us today - and increasingly in the future- far more about the times we are living in than miles and miles of historians' and journalists' reports."

The Polish Studies Center presents:
Poets and Time: An Unhistorical Approach Towards Polish Poetry
a lecture by Krzysztof Koehler

Thursday, December 4th
7:00 PM
Faculty Club in the University Club of the Indiana Memorial Union

Krzysztof Koehler will present a talk on an unhistorical approach towards time in Polish poetry during different eras and by different authors. Polish poetry is often only evaluated for its involvement in historical perspectives. Koehler will focus on the lyrical, autobiographical, philosophical and anti-historical attitudes towards time in the work of some of the most important Polish poets, including Kochanowski, Potocki, Lubomirski, Mickiewicz and Herbert.

Krzysztof Koehler is one of the leading figures of the younger generation in Polish writing. A poet, critic, scholar, film maker, and librettist, he has played a central role in the emergence of a new literature since 1989. His most recent book of poetry is Trzecia czesc (Krakow 2003).

The Polish Studies Center warmly invites you to our traditional potluck

CHRISTMAS PARTY

to be held on Thursday, December 11, 2003
5:00 - 7:00 pm
at the Leo R. Dowling International Center 111 S. Jordan Avenue

Come and celebrate Boze Narodzenie in Polish style, complete with the singing of Polish Christmas Carols and the sharing of the oplatek (Christmas wafer). Everyone is welcome!

Please bring a dish to share; those who are able are urged to bring something traditional, although all food is welcome. The Center will provide turkey, ham, soft drinks, silverware, napkins and so on.

Please note too that we have obtained a liquor permit for this event. Please feel free to bring alcoholic beverages to share that will be distributed by the bartender.

Ongoing Events:
Every Thursday:
7:30 pm at the Polish Studies Center (Starting September 4th)
Polish Coffee Hour

Spring 2003

Festival of Films of Stanislaw Lem.

February 6, 2003
The Investigation (directed by Marek Piestrak, 1973, 34 minutes) is a Kafka-esque metaphysical puzzler about mysteriously disappearing bodies that test the mettle of a young Scotland Yard officer who has a determinedly prosaic view of the world.

And in the futuristic half-hour comedy Roly Poly (Przekladaniec), directed by Wajda from a screenplay by Lem (1968, 35 minutes), Poland’s legendary comic actor Bogumil Kobiela plays a racing-car driver who has had so many body-part transplants that he can’t keep up with his debts to the donors.

February 7, 2003
In Test Pilot Pirx (Marek Piestrak, 1979, 90 minutes), the commander of a space flight does not realize his crewmembers are humanoid robots being tested by the U.N. space agency to see how they respond to human company. (Variety called it “a breath of fresh air… beautifully done.”)

February 8, 2003
The Hospital of the Transfiguration (Edward Zebrowski, 1979, 90 minutes) takes place in an insane asylum during the German occupation and pits incurable schizophrenics and slightly strange staffers against the Gestapo.

Following soon after the release of Steven Soderbergh's film adaptation of the science fiction classic, Solaris, by the world-renowned Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, (a novel originally brought to the screen by the Russian master Andrei Tarkovski), we present a short festival of four Polish films based on Lem's stories that nicely capture the intellectually provocative humor so characteristic of his writing. The only Polish films based on stories by Lem, until recently they had never been shown publicly in the United States; showings in New York City in Fall 2002 received rave reviews. At least two of the films were co-scripted by Lem himself, and one-Roly Poly--was directed by Andrzej Wajda.

The four films are: The Investigation; The Hospital of the Transfiguration; Test Pilot Pirx; and Roly Poly.

Best known to Americans for his 1961 novel, Solaris, Lem's books have appeared in 36 languages. Addressing profound philosophical issues, his work has been compared to that of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges. Solaris, His Master's Voice, and The Cyberiad belong to the most famous science-fiction works of the twentieth century. Newsweek has called Lem "the best science-fiction writer working in any language today."

For more information on Stanislaw Lem and the forthcoming Solaris by Steven Soderbergh, visit www.k26.com/solaris/lem/lem.html

All films will be shown in the Whittenberger Auditorium
in the IMU at 3:00 PM free of charge.
All films are in Polish with English subtitles.

February 21, 2003:
The Polish Studies Center, Russian and East European Institute, West European Studies and Horizons of Knowledge present:

"Polish Society in the Perspective of its Integration with the European Union"

A lecture by Janusz Mucha of Nicolaus Copernicus University.

Poland's entry into EU is scheduled for 2004, and will undoubtedly be another momentous process in the country's history. While Poland is often compared with its more economically developed neighbors such as Germany and France, Janusz Mucha argues that former European "peripheries" such as Greece and Portugal form a more apt comparison. Janusz Mucha will also address such points as: the EU and Polish aspirations; civilization backwardness in a historical perspective; agriculture problems: adaptation and contestation; the convinced, the uncertain, the opponents; political system and its dynamics; the Church and the youth of the pre-access period; the "decalogue" of the Polish assets; and a few words on the future.

3:00 p.m.
Ballantine Hall 109

March 27

Fine Arts Building, room 102
7:30 p.m. (there will be no Polish coffee hour)

Dzien Swira (Day of the Wacko) (Marek Koterski, 2002, 90 minutes) "A black comedy from the director of the highly accclaimed Nothing Funny (Nic smiesznego). A day in the life of a 49 year-old teacher who is completely disillusioned with his reality. As he looks for the causes of his unhappines, he blames his neighbors, his former wife and his own mother. However, any attempts to improve his life will be unsuccessful until he first begins to change himself." Najlepszy film XXVII Festiwalu Polskich Filmow Fabularnych w Gdyni (2002). The best Polish Film of the Year 2002.

Ongoing Events:

Every Thursday:
7pm at the Polish Studies Center
Polish Coffee Hour

Every Friday:
4:30 at Bear's
Polish Table

April 3
IUPUI 4:00pm, University Library RM 1126

April 4
4:00pm, Ballantine Hall 103

The Institute for Advanced Study Presents

"Polish Macho and the Myth of the Supermother. Towards a Diagnosis of Gender Relations after Communism"

A lecture by Agnieszka Graff of the Gender Studies Program,
University of Warsaw.

In her controversial book Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (1978), Michele Wallace wrote: The American black woman is haunted by the mythology that surrounds the American black man. It is a mythology based upon the real persecution of black men. (...) Every time she starts to wonder about her own misery, to think about reconstructing her own life, the ghosts pounce.' You crippled the black man. You worked against him. You betrayed him...'

An analogy with gender relations in contemporary Poland may seem risky, but it is nonetheless striking. There is a real history of suffering, and a myth of the 'castrating' power of communism, from which women are thought to have unjustly benefited. There is also a general sense that women's patriotic duty is to return to traditional roles, so that a 'natural' order can be restored along with male dignity. Basing my analysis on articles in popular magazines and images of men and women in popular films, I will argue that the gender dynamics in Eastern Europe may require a theory departing from models developed in mainstream (white) feminism in the West. The central issue here is structurally similar to that of African Americans, and perhaps women in other colonized societies: how to overcome a mythology of excessive female power, and the image of oppression as castration; how to be emancipated without being seen as traitor to one's community or nation.

An audio recording of this lecture will be available on the Institute website (www.indiana.edu/~ias) after April 15, 2003.

April 7th: 7pm Georgian Room, IMU
A visit and lecture by His Excellency Przemyslaw Grudzinski, Ambassador of the Republic of Poland.

"Poland and the Future of Transatlantic Relations"

April 8th: 4:00pm, The Hudson Institute, Hermahn Kahn Center, 5395 Emerson Way, Indianapolis (please RSVP for this event by contacting Debbie Price at 317-549-4103 or dprice@hudson.org, seating is limited)

"Poland and The United States, Strange or Natural Partners"

April 22: 12:00 noon, Radio & Television Center, Room 245
The Russian and East European Institute, the Department of History, the Department of Political Science, the Polish Studies Center, and the Borns Jewish Studies Program present a lecture by Professor Timothy Snyder

"The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing, 1943"

Timothy Snyder is an assistant professor of history at Yale University, specializing in the political history of ideas in modern Eastern Europe, He is the author of Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (Harvards University Press, 1998), and the co-editor of Wall Around the West: State Power and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001). His lecture draws from his most recent book, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (Yale University Press, 2003).

May 4: 7pm, First Christian Church, 205 East Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington (concert to be held in Sanctuary), Tickets: Students $3, General Public $5

We are proud to present one Poland's most unique accordion trios, Motion Trio. This internationally recognized group combines elements of jazz, rock and folk to create a sound that challenges traditional boundries of accordion music. Formed in 1996 by Janusz Wojtarowicz, the trio is completed by Marcin Galazyn and Pawel Baranek. Please join us in welcoming these laureates of the Krzysztof Penderecki International Contemporary Chamber Music Competition in the beautiful Gothic styled sanctuary of First Christian Church.