Newsletter

PIASA Latest News about us MEMBERSHIP CONFERENCES AWARDS PUBLICATIONS CONTACT Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 4 October 2022 Many of you have embarked upon a new academic year. For PIASA, the “new year” began on July 1. Over the last couple of months we have issued new calls for award nominations and deter-mined the location and dates of our annual conference, which will be hosted by Central Connecticut State University in New Britain from June 9 to 11 of next year. The conference roughly coincides with the 50th anniversary of one of the oldest Polish Studies programs in the country. For that very reason we expect our meeting to be a special one and the first to be held in the United States since the outbreak of the global COVID pandemic. In the meantime, we look confidently toward the future. We are working to develop a new partnership which will add to our awards and expect to make a major announcement in the near future. We will soon present to the general membership a proposal to amend our bylaws by limiting the president’s time in office to a maximum of six years and promoting a smooth transition from one president to another. We continue to nurture and enhance our relationships in Poland and with Polish institutions and scholars, who now contribute regularly to The Polish Review. Finding ways to remain relevant and active during a pandemic with its twists and turns has proved a challenge, but we have learned from it and adapted. Consequently, change is coming to PIASA, positive change, and I for one am excited by it. Please stay tuned! ― Robert Blobaum, PIASA President

PIASA Latest News about us MEMBERSHIP CONFERENCES AWARDS PUBLICATIONS CONTACT Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 3 July 2022 Shortly after returning from our Eighth World Congress in Białystok, I began to look at the first draft of a commemorative album devoted to PIASA’s first eighty years. Most readers of this newsletter are broadly familiar with PIASA’s founding “in America,” but documents retrieved from our archives to illustrate this album reveal some interesting details, as well as a few parallels with PIASA’s present condition. PIASA’s origins in the darkest days of the Second World War as the Polish Academy of Sciences in exile and the personal challenges its founders as immigrants had to overcome to establish themselves as well as an institute of Polish science and culture on American soil, frame a genuinely inspiring story. The outstanding academic credentials of those founders—Bronisław Malinowski, Oskar Halecki, Jan Kucharzewski, Wacław Lednicki, Rafał Taubenschlag and Wojciech Świętosławski—no doubt assisted in securing the confirmation of PIASA’s statutes and leadership by the wartime Polish government in London, the news relayed in a telegram to Halecki by Ambassador Jan Ciechanowski. The day after his presidential address at PIASA’s inauguration at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York on May 15, 1942, Bronisław Malinowski suddenly passed away. One can only imagine the shock experienced by those who had so recently celebrated with him the moment of PIASA’s birth. Flash forward to 2022. PIASA’s Eighth World Congress had to overcome challenges of its own—an unrelenting pandemic, border insecurity created by a troublesome Belarusian neighbor, and a Russian invasion of Ukraine that brought artillery and rocket fire to Poland’s doorstep and millions of refugees through it. Yet we persevered in our determination to renew our academic meetings after a two-year hiatus, we adapted to the un1 Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America Vol. 2, No. 3 July 2022 certain conditions by providing a hybrid format, and we renewed our valued contacts with Polish academicians, scholars, and friends. We received congratulatory messages on our 80th anniversary from the Minister of Culture, Piotr Gliński, and the US Ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski. And as PIASA’s 11th president, I am pleased to report that I safely returned to the United States, genuinely proud to be a small part of the illustrious and on-going history of a Polish Institute no longer in exile, but “of America” and at home in Poland. ― Robert Blobaum, PIASA President

PIASA Latest News about us MEMBERSHIP CONFERENCES AWARDS PUBLICATIONS CONTACT Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 2 April 2022 I set my alarm early for February 24 as I prepared to embark on a long road trip from my home in Franklin, Tennessee, to a conference in Richmond, Virginia. After throwing a few last items together, I did a quick check of the news on my iPhone to see if anything had changed in Ukraine. Indeed, it had, horrifically so. A day earlier with war on the horizon, PIASA had endorsed a letter of support and solidarity from the Polish PEN Club to its Ukrainian counterpart. Two days later, PIASA issued its own statement in both English and Ukrainian to condemn in no uncertain terms Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine (see above). The Board of Directors then began to consider how best to assist Ukrainian refugees who had already crossed the border with Poland by the thousands. As the scale of the humanitarian crisis increased by the day, we settled on a $5,000 donation to UNICEF based on its long-time organizational experience in alleviating the suffering of children, which it now brought to Poland. Belarus had played host to the launching of Russia’s invasion from the north and, against a backdrop of recent tensions with Poland as the Lukashenko regime sought to push refugees from outside of Europe across the border, we also had to make some decisions about our planned conference in nearby Białystok. The relief from COVID allowed for some positive thinking and, after assessing how the city was managing to support 30,000 Ukrainian refugees at last count, we decided to move forward with the conference. Indeed, if there was ever a need for a conference whose main theme is the borderlands of east central Europe, it is now. At a time when Ukraine is fighting for its territorial integrity and very existence as an independent state, something Poles know only too well from their own history, PIASA’s conference in Białystok can be an expression of appreciation for the experiences and cultures of all peoples who have resided in this critical region of Europe. ― Robert Blobaum, PIASA President

PIASA Latest News about us MEMBERSHIP CONFERENCES AWARDS PUBLICATIONS CONTACT Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 1 January 2022 I would imagine that like me, you are looking for-ward to the new year or at least to a time when we are not worried about a new COVID variant. Virus aside, there is much to celebrate. The Board of Directors has been especially active this year. It has created new awards in honor the late Rachel Feldhay Brenner and Anna M. Cienciala and, most re-cently, a prize to recognize gradu-ate student scholarship. It has also approved a resolution to “inter-nationalize” itself by creating space for the inclusion of future board members from outside of North America. The latter corre-sponds to a visible “international-ization” of the PIASA regular membership over the last several years. We are pleased by this development, as well as in the overall growth of our membership. We are also pleased with PIASA’s gen-eral financial health which has created funding opportu-nities not available to us in the past.Moving forward, we will be sponsoring or co-sponsoring a series of online events, beginning with a conversation about identity in Gdańsk scheduled for Jan-uary 15. Please check our website for more information. We also remain optimistic about our planned internation-al congress in Białystok and will certainly keep you up-dated. We know that in the present climate all plans are tentative, but please pencil Białystok into those plans. How wonderful it would be to see each other again! With that hopeful thought in mind and on behalf of the Board of Directors, we wish you the very best for the New Year. ― Robert Blobaum, PIASA President

PIASA Latest News about us MEMBERSHIP CONFERENCES AWARDS PUBLICATIONS CONTACT Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 4 October 2021 I had expected this column to be without some opening reference to COVID but we are now in the fourth wave of the pandemic which may not be the last. Nonetheless, PIASA has reopened its New York office on East 30th Street for regular business on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Those who wish to enter the building to use our library and archives are welcome to do so. Unfortunately, we are still unable to host events attended by larger groups.Meanwhile, our Board of Directors has hardly been inactive. The Board unanimously approved a non-discrimination policy statement which was long overdue. We also felt that we could not remain silent in the face of a poorly veiled assault on independent media contained in legislation passed by the Polish parliament but now held up in the Senate. As a non-profit academic and cultural organization, our long-standing practice has been to support principles such as democratic governance and civil liberties but to refrain from any involvement in partisan politics. We believe that our statement in support of independent media in Poland, accessible on our website, meets that standard.A genuinely international organization in the making, PIASA has a bright future attested to by a growing membership, the expanding readership of The Polish Review, and our creation of new awards to recognize outstanding work in new areas of scholarship. That we have sustained this momentum during the COVID era is truly remarkable. But growth also brings challenges, which we will highlight in future newsletters. Stay tuned! ― Robert Blobaum, PIASA President

PIASA Latest News about us MEMBERSHIP CONFERENCES AWARDS PUBLICATIONS CONTACT July-2021-PIASA-Newsletter Greetings! I had hoped to begin this column with a postmortem to the COVID pandemic, but that may have to wait. Yet there are many reasons for optimism. A year ago, we had hoped that the pandemic would be sufficiently behind us to plan our international meeting in Białystok, which we were then forced to cancel. We can now look forward to doing so with confidence. A year ago, our office in New York was closed to visitors, as was the city itself. Today we are preparing to restore normal business operations and to welcome you again to our facilities. Meetings of the PIASA board have been held virtually since March 2020. We can now think about the restoration of in-person gatherings. We have also learned a good deal. Unable to have “normal” award ceremonies two years in a row, we hosted virtual events featuring our 2020 award recipients. For those of you who could not attend the first time around, we invite you to view the recordings on our website. We have found other ways to make ourselves visible through our revamped website and this very newsletter. The Polish Review is becoming the top shelf journal we had always hoped it to be, reflected in the number and quality of submissions and leaps in readership. Finally, after years of stagnation, membership is up and PIASA is becoming a genuinely international organization. All these signs encourage us to believe in a brighter future. We hope to see you soon! ― Robert Blobaum, PIASA President Other News Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 3 July 2022 • July 5, 2022 Congratulatory letter • June 21, 2022 US Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski address to the 8th World Congress on Polish Studies in Białystok • June 12, 2022 Trupa Trupa’s US tour promoting Polish Culture • April 19, 2022 1 2 3 … 29 Next » Navigation Home About Us membership conferences Awards Publications Archives Library Contact Contact Us 208 East 30th St. New York, NY 10016 +1 (212) 686-4164piasany@gmail.com DONATION Get Connected Facebook-f Instagram Youtube Envelope Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej

PIASA Latest News about us MEMBERSHIP CONFERENCES AWARDS PUBLICATIONS CONTACT Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 2 April 2021 To open my remarks for this issue of the newsletter, I had hoped to begin with a note of enthusiasm for our upcoming conference in Białystok. Alas, this was not to be. In February, together with our hosts from the University of Białystok, we decided the risks to public health and the possibilities of another lockdown were still too great. After having to cancel the 2020 conference planned for Chicago, postponement of the Białystok conference to June 2022 came as an obvious disappointment.Like many of you, we also grieve personal lossesin our case, the passing of our fellow board member Rachel Feldhay Brenner, a distinguished scholar of Polish and Jewish Holocaust literature, and of our former board member and renowned cell biologist, Zbigniew (Zbyszek) Darzynkiewicz. We honor their memory by recognizing their out-standing contributions to their fields and the many efforts they devoted to the work of PIASA.On a more positive note, we continue to remain active in other ways. We selected the new recipients of our various awards (see page 2) and plan to recognize them by hosting or co-hosting webinars and virtual conversations in their honor. And, in the year of the pandemic our membership numbers are up, visits to our revamped web-site have doubled, readership and submissions to The Polish Review continue to grow, and we have received very positive feedback following publication of the first issue of our newsletter.In closing, I hope that as you read or scroll through this issue you will share my impression that PIASA, well into the eighth decade of its existence, is an organization of renewed vitality and purpose. ― Robert Blobaum, PIASA President

PIASA Latest News about us MEMBERSHIP CONFERENCES AWARDS PUBLICATIONS CONTACT Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 1 January 2021 Greetings! We are pleased to present to you the first quarterly issue of the new PIASA Newsletter. At a time when we are unable to network with each other in person, it’s important to provide our members and friends an opportunity to keep abreast of important events in the life of the Institute and happenings within the Polish studies community. In it you will find news about conferences, a members’ forum, our most recent award recipients, scholarship and fellowship opportunities, recently published books, the achievements of fellow members and much more. What a year it has been! The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic led to the temporary closure of our office in New York and the cancellation of our conference planned for Chicago in June. The latter was particularly regrettable because of the quality of the panel and paper submissions we had received before that decision was made. Nonetheless, we have pressed ahead with planning for a June 2021 world congress in Białystok, in expanding our membership, in putting out calls for nominations for the 2020 awards and in preserving and digitizing of our archives. We are especially proud of the growing reputation and readership of our journal, The Polish Review, thanks to the efforts of its editorial team.We trust that the new year will be better than the last for the entire Polish studies community. On behalf of PIASA’s Board of Directors, I wish you all the best for Wszystkiego najlepszego! ― Robert Blobaum, PIASA President