Inaugurated in 2013 the Polish Studies Center's Annual Wiles Memorial Lecture is a celebration of a stalwart academic's life. Through hosting American and international scholars working in the domain of Polish Studies and giving place to research and discourse, we hope to honor a friend, colleague and pioneer.
Tim Wiles joined the IU faculty in 1973 as a professor in the English and Comparative Literature departments, teaching until his passing in 2003. His work in the study of drama and performance brought him to his affinity for Poland, where he spent 1971 as a director at a Wrocław theater festival. 1975-1976 saw Tim assisting in the creation of the American Studies Center at Warsaw University, an important founding which would echo back to Indiana University with the inauguration of the Polish Studies Center in 1977. After a term as Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Warsaw in 1981, Tim returned to Indiana and directed the Polish Studies Center for more than ten years.
Tim's devotion and labor on behalf of Polish studies and Polish-American exchange are attested by the honors he received in Poland: the Distinguished Medal of Service awarded to him by Warsaw University and the Amicus Poloniae award granted by the Polish ambassador, both received in 1997. Beyond these honors, the achievements of Timothy Wiles' life are in evidence everywhere he was, most vividly in the friends, colleagues and students who retain his memory and in the Polish Studies Center itself.
12th Annual Timothy Wiles Memorial Lecture in Polish Studies
Why is Polish politics so polarized?
Aleks Szczerbiak
Professor of Politics and Head of Department of Politics at the University of Sussex
April 16 @ 5pm EST via Zoom
Nationalism, Philosemitism, and Poland's Jewish Revival
Geneviève Zubrzycki
Professor of Sociology, Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia and the Copernicus Center for Polish Studies University of Michigan
What does the war in Ukraine mean for Poland and Central Europe?
Anne Applebaum Pulitzer-prize winning historian, a staff writer for The Atlantic, and a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Agora Institute
"The Worlding of Eastern Europe: Polish Architects in Cold War West Africa"
Presented by Lukasz Stanek
Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the Manchester School of Architecture, The University of Manchester, UK
"Along the Polish-Californian Border: West Coast Milosz"
Presented by Clare Cavanagh
Frances Hooper Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University; Professor, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Comparative Literary Studies; Affiliate, Gender Studies, Poetry and Poetics, Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The 1968 "Anti-Zionist Campaign" in Poland and its Echoes Today
Dariusz Stola
Director, Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw Professor, Institute for Political Studies, Polish Academy of Science
In March 1968, in reaction to a student rebellion, the communist government of Poland launched a propaganda campaign against the alleged Zionists, who were accused of a conspiracy to undermine socialist Poland. The campaign of slander and harassment forced half of Poland's Jews into exile and deeply affected the life of those who remained.
For the fiftieth anniversary of the events, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw prepared an exhibition. which coincided with a stormy debate on the recent
"Hobcaust defamation law" and stirred controversy on the responsibility for the 1968 antisemitic purges. Prof. Stola will present the events of 1968 and its cultural memory from a broader perspective of Polish debates on Polish- Jewish past.
"The Return of National Communism"
Poland's Law and Justice movement (Prawo Sprawiedliwosc, or PiS) is more than just the local iteration of a global "populist" trend. It is, instead, the culmination of a story that has been developing for at least six decades. The old battle lines between communists and anticommunists obscured important cross-cutting divisions in Polish political culture. There were many who disliked the post-WWIl state because it was insufficiently democratic, but many others who felt that it was insufficiently national. Representatives of each critique could be found both among reformers inside the communist party and among the opposition. In this light, 1989 should be understood not simply as the defeat of the Polish United Workers Party by the Solidarity movement, but as the victory of liberal democrats over authoritarian nationalists. The current regime represents the reversal of that outcome.
Brian Porter-Szúcs is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where he has taught since 1994. He is the author of Poland and the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom (Wiley Blackwell, 2014), Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland (Oxford University Press, 2010), and When Nationalism Began to Hate:
Imagining Modern Politics in 19th Century Poland (Oxford University Press, 2000), which was translated into Polish as Gdy nacionalizm zaczat nienawidzic: Wyobrazenia nowoczesnej polityki w dziewietnastowiecznej Polsce (Pogranicze, 2011). Together with Bruce Berglund he co-edited Christianity and Modernity in East-Central Europe (Central European University Press, 2010). Later this year his book Catkiem zwyczajny kraj: Historia Polski bez martyrologii will appear from WAB publishers in Warsaw. This is a substantially revised, expanded, and updated version of Poland in the Modern World. Porter-Szúcs grew up in Mercer, Pennsylvania, got his undergraduate degree at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and received his doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Ebola from Brussels: The Right-Wing War on ‘Gender Ideology’ in Poland and Beyond”
Agnieszka Graff
Feminist, Human Rights Activist,
Professor of Gender Studies at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw
The Culture of Testimony in Poland after World War II
Professor David Crowley
Head of Critical Writing in Art & Design Royal College of Art, London, UK
Return Migration and the Creation of a Transatlantic Polish Culture
Presented by
Keely Stauter-Halsted
Professor of History
Hejna Family Chair in Polish Studies University of Illinois Chicago
The Pendulum Of Freedom: Where Are European Ideals Today?
Jacek Zakowski
Journalist, Author, and Political Commentator
Shows of Solidarity: Cabaret in Interwar Warsaw
Beth Holmgren
Chair, Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University
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