Welcome to the Polish Studies Program!
The Polish Studies Program at the University at Buffalo has entered a period of programmatic development. We aspire to engage students, scholars and the community whose knowledge and interests center on the Polish experience. The Program's mission involves a broad approach to the discipline that situates Polishness in its historical contexts of cosmopolitanism, transnationalism and diaspora. We seek to provide a contemporary international perspective that reflects the nation's new position as a member of the European Union, incorporating, at the same time, the Polish experience outside of Poland as reflected in the Polish community in Buffalo.
News and Events
New Polish Studies courses in Spring and Summer 2010
The Polish Studies Program is offering new courses in the Spring 2010 and Summer 2010.
Click here to see the detailed Spring schedule.
Click here to see the detailed Summer schedule.
Summer 2009
Dr. Janina Brutt-Griffler has been awarded an annual research grant by the Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy to carry out a research project entitled Forms of Multilingualism: EU language policy, national language and English. This study will examine the societal impact of the implementation of the European Union’s language policy in Poland, the largest of its new member states.
The Polish Studies Program’s Kosciuszko Foundation Visiting Scholar for 2009 will be Dr. Artur Grabowski, Associate Professor in the Department of Twentieth Century Polish Literature at Jagiellonian University. Dr. Grabowski teaches courses on Polish poetry, drama, modern literature, and composition and has held visiting positions at the University of Washington and the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has published on, among others, Gomborowicz, Herbert, Witkiewicz, and Grotowski. He is also author of numerous essays on modern literature and literary theory, four collections of poetry, and five plays. Dr. Grabowski has translated English and Italian poetry into Polish. In Fall 2009 he is teaching POL 210 History of Poland and POL 410 Greatest Works of Polish Culture.
Academic Year 2008-2009
Dr. Janina Brutt-Griffler, Director of the Polish Studies Program, was an invited speaker at the World Diversity Leadership Summit at the United Nations, New York, July 9-11. The Summit was an important gathering of some 600 senior corporate, government, and non-governmental organization (NGO) officials who came together to discuss the challenges and opportunities related to global diversity and gender equality solutions. In speaking of global diversity, Brutt-Griffler said: “I cannot imagine speaking of global diversity without recognizing linguistic diversity and the forms it takes: it is a challenge and an opportunity in academia and the corporate world.” Pointing out that we often operate on the basis of monolingual assumptions despite living in a multilingual society, she emphasized that the challenge is to uncover the talent and resources to create a conducive environment for students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The private sector has been in many ways more advanced in recognizing societal bilingualism. Developing programs that build advanced foreign language competencies among American students represents an important opportunity for changing monolingual academic cultures.
Dr. Janina Brutt-Griffler has been elected Associate Editor of the International Journal of Applied Linguistics, the flagship journal of Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée (AILA) or the International Association of Applied Linguistics. The Association fosters the work of its national member associations such as The American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL). The journal plays an important role in promoting high quality interdisciplinary applied linguistic research that both the Journal and the Association share. InJAL publishes articles that explore the relationship between expertise in linguistics, broadly defined, and the everyday experience of language. Its scope is international in that it publishes articles which show explicitly how local issues of language use, education, and learning exemplify more global concerns.
The bilingual project “1968: I odezwą się z góry/Voices from the Mountaintop” was awarded the Digital Humanities Initiative at Buffalo Summer 2008 Research Grant. The project features collaboration between the Department of African American Studies and Polish Studies Program to provide access to digital multimedia materials on the social upheavals of 1968 in Poland and the United States. At the same time the project is encouraging the transnational study of history that is central to the goal of each. The finished product will be produced in the formats of a hypermedia digital archive and an interactive DVD.
The Digital Humanities Initiative at Buffalo functions as an applied think-tank for the humanities and related areas. It is designed to serve as an intellectual hub for scholars involved in innovative research and instruction at the intersection of the humanities, computing, and other emerging digital technologies.
