POLISH STUDIES ENDOWMENT COMMITTEE

Category: Lectures

Witchers, Strigas, and a Man on the Moon – Polish Legends in Contemporary Popular Culture

A lecture by Dawid Junke, PhD Wednesday, 25 May, 2022 at 7:00 PM (PT) on ZOOM https://washington.zoom.us/j/97889328457 Slavic mythology has recently enjoyed unprecedented levels of global popularity, mostly thanks to the success of Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher book cycle and its adaptations – CD Projekt Red’s video game trilogy and Netflix’s live action show. This…
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KATARZYNA KOBRO COMPOSING SPACE

Prof. Marek Wieczorek Saturday, 24 April, 2021 at 11AM (PT) on ZOOM ABOUT THE LECTURE: Between 1925 and 1933, Polish sculptor Katarzyna Kobro made a series of groundbreaking abstract Spatial Compositions. ‘As it becomes united with space,’ she wrote about these works, ‘the new sculpture should be its most condensed and essential part.’ In this…
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(Why) Did Socialism Fail in Poland?

Prof. Brian Porter-Szűcs  Wednesday, October 21, 2020 at 6:00PM Lecture on line via ZOOM Registration required. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the lecture. ABOUT THE LECTURE: Many economists in Poland, after spending decades trying to build socialism, ended up embracing neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s. This seemingly…
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FUNDRAISING DINNER and LECTURE: Paderewski and World Politics

SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 2018 at the University of Washington Club on the UW campus Silent auction, music and cocktails start at 5:30 PM Dinner at 7:00 PM This year, Poland celebrates the 100th anniversary of regaining independence after 123 years of partitions between its three neighbors. Pianist, composer and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski played a…
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J. Howard Miller We Can Do It!, 1943

American Realism and Soviet Propaganda in Poster Art

Exactly how different is Social Realism from Socialist Realism? Are there any similarities between these seemingly distant genres? Dr. Gabrielson will explore the nuances of American Realism from Norman Rockwell to the Works Progress Administration, and compare it with Socialist Realism, which was imposed on poster art throughout the former Eastern Bloc. Dr. Izabela Gabrielson…
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Dr. Maria Siemionow

April 25, 2013, 7:30 pm Kane 220 Challenges of Facial Transplantation co sponsored by UW Division of Plastic Surgery The lecture presents challenges encountered during establishment of Face Transplantation Program at Cleveland Clinic. These include medical, surgical as well as ethical challenges. The process of patient selection as well as face transplant outcomes are also…
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Dr. Dan Heller

April 10, 2013, 7:00 pm Thomson 101 Two Fatherlands? Zionist Youth and the Politics of Belonging in 1930s Poland Dr. Daniel K. Heller, Hazel D. Cole Fellow in Jewish Studies, Jackson School of International Studies, is an expert on Eastern European Jewish history and the history of Israel. By exploring the performances of a Polish-Zionist…
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Dr. Henryka Bochniarz

Poland: A New Growth Pole in Europe Thursday, January 12, 2012, 7:30AM-8:30AM Breakfast/Presentation World Trade Center 2200 Alaskan Way, Suite 410, Seattle, WA, 98121 The event is organized by Polish American Chamber of Commerce Pacific Northwest (PACCPN) To register, go to PACCPN website Poland is known to be the only EU member country not to…
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Prof. Robert Faggen

Milosz and the American Poets He Loved. . . and Hated January 11, 2012, 7:30PM Walker-Ames Room at Kane Hall, UW Campus Lecture is free and open to the public Czeslaw Milosz lived in the United States for more than four decades, most of them as citizen. Though his cultural and poetic roots were in…
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Expanding the Imagination

Ryszard Horowitz Lecture May 5, 2011 at 7:30pm at Kane Hall, Room 110, UW Campus Free and open to the public Expanding the Imagination Photo Exhibit May 2 – 31, 2011 at Odegaard Library, Second Floor, UW Campus Free and open to the public Official opening of the exhibit before the lecture on May 5,…
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Chopin – Mortal Man, Immortal Genius

Speaker: Dr. Steven Lagerberg Piano performance: Fred Kronacher Date: Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 7:00PM Place: Brechemin Auditorium at the School of Music, UW campus For years, Frederic Chopin has been thought to have suffered from the ravages of tuberculosis. A startling new controversy now claims cystic fibrosis and not tuberculosis was the cause of…
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Seismic tomography: a window into the earth’s interior from crust to core

Prof. Barbara Romanowicz October 27, 2010 at 7:30PM at Walker-Ames Room at Kane Hall, UW Campus Seismic waves generated by earthquakes travel through the earth’s interior, providing a way to investigate its structure all the way to the center, much as X rays in the medical tomography are used to image the human body .…
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The Ghost of Shakespeare in Szymborska

Dr. Anna Frajlich Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 7:30PM Kane Hall, Walker Ames Room, Kane Hall Wisława Szymborska is a winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature for “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.” For Anna Frajlich, a poet herself,…
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Return to Democracy or Constant Crisis? Polish Cinema after 1989

Dr Elżbieta Durys, Lodz University April 14th, 2010. 7pm. Walker Ames Room, Kane Hall During and after the 34th Polish Film Festival, which was held on September 14-19, 2009 in Gdynia, an astonishing thing occurred. In day-to-day reports, journalists were confused by the large amount of quality movies to discuss. People from the surrounding urban…
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The Central European Dimension of the Global Economic Crisis: Prospects for Recovery

Dr. Marek Belka March 5, 2010 at 7:30PM at Kane Hall, Room 220 Prof. Marek Belka is the current Director of the International Monetary Fundís European Department. He studied at the Economics Department at the University of Lodz, where he became Professor of Economics in 1994. He was Polandís Deputy Prime Minister in 1997 and…
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Ideology and the Tragedy of East Central Europe in the 20th Century

Daniel Chirot December 10, 2009 at 7:00PM UW Campus, Walker-Ames Room at Kane Hall Professor Chirot will discuss the ideological underpinnings of events which took place in East Central Europe during the 20th century finally leading to the systemic transformation 20 years ago. He will present the larger historical and geo-political context of this European…
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Polish Heroes: Those Who Rescued Jews

January 29,2009 Dr. Przemyslaw Chojnowski: Irena Sendler’s Children Dr.Chojnowski is the 2008/09 Polish Studies Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Washington in Seattle. In Poland, he is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Polish and Classical Philology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. He received his PhD from the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt…
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Polish Heroes: Those Who Rescued Jews

January 22, 2009 Martha Golubiec: Żegota and Righteous Among Nations Ms. Golubiec is one of the founders of the UW PSEC, its past chair, and the organizer of the Polish Heroes series. A transplant to the Northwest from Chicago where she graduated from Loyola University in Political Science, she has been involved in the Seattle…
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Polish Heroes: Those Who Rescued Jews

January 15, 2009 Dr. Przemysław Chojnowski: Introduction In the introduction to the keynote address by Ms. Stanlee Stahl, Prof. Przemyslaw Chojnowski provided a brief history of the Jews in Poland, from early medieval times to the outbreak of WWII in September 1939. Przemyslaw Chojnowski, PhD, is the 2008/09 Polish Studies Fulbright Lecturer at the University…
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Dr. Anna Niedźwiedź

October 21, 2008 Our Lady of Czestochowa: religious or national symbol of Poland? Dr. Anna Niedźwiedź is from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, where she teaches cultural anthropology. Her lecture focused on the symbolic meanings connected with the image of the Black Madonna in Polish culture and popular religiosity. Enhanced by ethnographical examples that…
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General Mirosław Hermaszewski

September 18, 2008 General Mirosław Hermaszewski, who in 1978 flew aboard Soyuz 30, gave a very interesting lecture about the history of space travel and his own experience as the first and only Polish astronaut. The hour spent with the cosmonaut provided everybody with rare impressions of the circumstances of space travel, the first successes…
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Adam Michnik

May 2nd, 2008 Revolution’s Aftermath: Twenty Years of Polish Democracy Mr. Michnik, former dissident, historian, essayist and one of Europe’s leading journalists, has been Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s first independent daily newspaper, since its inception in 1989. A life-long activist for human rights, he spent a total of six years in prison between 1965…
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Professor Leszek Balcerowicz

November 1st, 2007 Post-Communist Transformation in Central Europe Professor Leszek Balcerowicz is a former Deputy Prime Minister <img src=”/static/images/balcerowicz.gif” alt=” [balcerowicz photo] ” class=”figure” /> , Minister of Finance, and President of the Polish National Bank. Currently Prof. Balcerowicz is Head of the International Comparative Studies Department, Warsaw School of Economics. He is the author…
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Professor Richard Dunn

May 2007 Joseph Conrad: Supra-National Novelist Richard Dunn is a Professor and former Chair of the University of Washington English Department, where he has taught fiction and Victorian Literature courses since 1967. He is author or editor of 11 books and numerous articles and reviews, principally on the nineteenth-century English Novel. Professor Dunn will lecture…
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Polish Ambassador Janusz Reiter

April 2007 The Polish Perspective on the Future of Europe and the Trans-Atlantic Relationship Janusz Reiter became ambassador of Poland to the United States on Oct. 3, 2005. A graduate of the University of Warsaw, Ambassador Reiter in 1977 became editor of the daily newspaper Zycie Warszawy, but was later dismissed during martial law. In…
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