PAHA Awards Ceremony was held on January 8, 2022 in New Orleans. List of Awardees for 2020 recognized during the ceremony in New Orleans, can be found here: https://polishamericanstudies.org/text/207/paha-awards-2020.html
Recipients of PAHA 2021 Awards and Prizes:
OSKAR HALECKI PRIZE recognizes an important book or monograph on the Polish experience in the United States. Eligibility is limited to works of historical and/or cultural interest, including those in the social sciences or humanities, published in the two years prior to the year of the award.
2021 Anna Frajlich “The Ghost of Shakespeare: collected essays.” Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2020. [Series: Polish Studies]
The Ghost of Shakespeare takes its name from Frajlich's essay on Nobel Prize laureate Wisława Szymborska and highlights how Shakespeare weaves through many exiled Polish writers. She considers the work of major Polish writers of the twentieth century, including Zbigniew Herbert, Czesław Milosz, Bruno Schulz, and Józef Wittlin who were all resisters. The book concludes with autobiographical essays that describe her parents' dramatic flight from Poland at the outbreak of the war, her own exile from Poland in 1969, settling in New York City, and building her career as a scholar and leading poet of her generation. This volume of essays results from her lifelong role as the guardian of and contributor to Polish literary life in exile including Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian authors.
Among Frajlich’s long list of distinctions the Susanne Lotarski Distinguished Achievement Award, given by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences “for her many contributions to Polish culture in poetry, prose, and literary studies extending over several decades.”
SKALNY CIVIC ACHIEVEMENT AWARD honors individuals or groups who advance PAHA's goals of promoting research and awareness of the Polish American experience. Possible initiatives may include preservation of artifacts or broader community initiatives related to Polonia.
2021 The Polish Heritage Center in Panna Maria Texas, the newly dedicated state-of-the-art Center will serve those interested in exploring Polish American history through immersive displays, rotating exhibits featuring artifacts and story themes from the area heritage communities and traveling exhibits from Polish American partnering institutions. Bishop Emeritus John W. Yanta was the motivational force and founder behind this national effort.
The Center includes an extensive library, genealogy room and archives with staff to assist researchers interested in learning more about the Polish impact on Texas history and its settlements. Researchers will have access to sources and materials such as photographs, birth certificates, and newspaper articles from the local Polish community in Panna Maria. The space also contains a theater and seminar space and has launched education outreach with other organizations. The stated mission of the Polish Heritage Center is to “keep vibrant and relevant the history, values, beliefs, customs and traditions of the Polish settlers and their descendants…and to inspire, engage, and educate our visitors” and the new center certainly meets these goals.
AMICUS POLONIAE AWARD recognizes significant contributions enhancing knowledge of Polish and Polish-American heritage by individuals not belonging to the Polish American community.
Professor John P. Dunn teaches history at Valdosta State University, Georgia where he offers courses dealing with the Middle East, Eastern Europe, China, and World Military History. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a non-partisan policy institute headquartered in Washington, D.C., selected Dunn as an Academic Fellow for 2010. In 2018 he launched Valdosta State University’s Department of History first study-abroad program with a trip to Poland. He secured funding to take a group of students to attend the PIASA conference in Gdańsk. This was produced in partnership with the University of Gdańsk. Prof. Dunn expanded opportunities for Polish studies by sponsoring Kosciuszko Foundation Visiting Professor Ania Mazurkiewicz from the University of Gdańsk to teach through the Louie A. Brown Visiting International Scholars Program. He supported a Polish studies conference celebrating Poland’s centennial rebirth anniversary by inviting and sponsoring professors from around the country and ending with a banquet of Polish foods which had never been seen in Valdosta where there really is no Polish community!!
Prof. Dunn participates in PAHA Conferences where he has offered presentations. Publications include articles in Polish American Studies.
JAMES PULA DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD is given occasionally to a member of PAHA who has rendered valuable and sustained service to the organization. Since 2017, this award honors Prof. James Pula, PAHA's past president and treasurer, and a long-time editor of the Polish American Studies.
Ewa Barczyk is Emerita Associate Provost and Director of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries. She is the current President of the Polish American Librarians Association and is actively involved in the works of other professional library science organizations, including American Libraries Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, and World Digital Libraries. In addition to her life-long work as a librarian, she is also engaged in the local Polish community through Polanki, the Polish Women’s Cultural Club of Wisconsin, of which she is past president and where she continues to serve on the board. But it is Ewa’s involvement with and leadership in PAHA that has earned her the James Pula Distinguished Service Award. Ewa currently leads a PAHA project titled Polish Migrant Memoirs and Letters: Documenting the World War II Diaspora, which aims to collect documents and artifacts from the members of the World War II diaspora in North America. She also serves as an advisor on a PAHA grant initiative Documenting the Polish American Experience. Finally, she is completing a book titled Guide to Polish Historical Sites in North Americathat documents Polish historic sites in North America in. A letter nominating Ewa for this award noted her “enormous investment of time, talent, professionalism, and perseverance,” without which Guide to Polish Historical Sites in North America would not have happened. Ewa also currently serves on PAHA’s Board of Directors and is the organization’s 2nd Vice President.
CREATIVE ARTS PRIZE recognizes the contributions in the field of creative arts by individuals or groups who have promoted an awareness of the Polish experience in the Americas.
2021 Dr. Magda Romanska is an associate professor of theatre arts at Emerson College (Boston) and has held visiting appointments at the Yale School of Drama and Harvard University. Dr. Romanska is a prolific author with a focus on Polish theatre artists such as Kantor and Grotowski as well as Janusz Głowacki, performance artist Dorota Nieznalska and Sławomir Mrożek. She has also written about women directors in Poland. She has translated six plays by playwright Bogusław Schaeffer and two film scripts by Andrzej Wajda into English. In addition to her scholarly and translation work, Romanska writes plays as well as creative fiction and nonfiction which have been staged throughout the country. She is an active professional dramaturg serving as the resident dramaturg for the Boston Lyric Opera. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of The TheatreTimes.com, the largest global digital theater portal leading a team of over 140 regional managing editors around the world covering theatre in over ninety countries and the coverage of Poland theatre is particularly impressive. Dr. Romanska has “worked tirelessly to make Polish theatre better understood by the English-speaking public, in addition to working as a creative artist in her own right.”
GRADUATE STUDENT/YOUNG SCHOLAR TRAVEL GRANT
The travel grant was awarded to Kinga Langowska a PhD student at the Doctoral School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Gdańsk, under the supervision of Professor Anna Mazurkiewicz at the Doctoral School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Gdańsk. She is on the project team at the Emigration Museum in Gdynia dealing with the issues of highly qualified Polish emigrants, migration stereotypes and migration plans of the young generation of Poles. She serves on the editorial team of the „Polish Migration Review.” She has been selected as a Fulbright junior research scholar and will be spending 10 months at U of Michigan Ann Arbor in 2022-2023.