Engaged Polish Studies

For many years now, we've been told that the world is rushing and change is inevitable. New phenomena and trends—technology, artificial intelligence, social media—go hand in hand with eternal questions about the meaning and direction of existence, the uncertainty of tomorrow, the inability to keep up with changes, the need to preserve the human element in a world of algorithms and procedures. 

In the years 2024-2027, the "Polish Studies Facing the Challenges of the Contemporary World" project team will conduct coordinated bibliographic work that aims to create an expert "Bibliography of Sources for Science and Society". Using the resources of the humanities (and Polish studies) has prompted us to bring the issues related to disability studies, narrative medicine, medical humanities, and architectural literary studies closer to society. The thematic collections that we collect to bring these issues closer are created in cooperation between bibliographers and subject experts who provide substantive supervision over the project results and are responsible for the substantive quality of bibliographic collections and collected data.

We cordially invite you to participate in "Geopolonistyka", the purpose of which is to create an interactive, multilingual database of Polish studies in the world. Information in the form of text, photos, recordings, podcasts, for which the basic guide is an interactive map, aim to create synthetic knowledge about the current state and history of Polish studies. "Geopolonistyka" allows you to recognize the activities of people and institutions involved in conducting various forms of research and teaching Polish literature, culture and language outside Poland – currently and in the past. We will be honored if you would like to present your activities within "Geopolonistyka" and fill out the survey provided by us.

"Halina Taborska's book (...) is a peculiar study of the aesthetics of an anti-humanistic act. In fact it introduces such "aesthetics" to the readers, and we are presented with a very carefully prepared documentation of various objects, material and spatial shapes, "installations", murals, museum organizations and documentary activities. These are various shapes in the public space which mediate our perception of an unimaginable crime or "blinding” shapes that protect us from the damages of seeing it again. By bringing this collection of practices together, the book shows their character and multiplicity. The research material gathered in the publication and the scholarly approach make it a must-read not only in the study of war crimes in Europe, but also in the study of symbolic representation of mass crimes - especially in the field of cultural studies, cultural anthropology and art history.” (Prof. Jan Stanisław Wojciechowski, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw - excerpt from the review on the cover).