Spring 2007
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
A Poetry Reading by Piotr Sommer
Reading from his new collection Continued
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.
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