The 2020-21 academic year has been an interesting if perplexing one for so many IU departments, institutes, and centers as they scrambled to maintain their customary level of scholarly activity while safeguarding the health of the communities they serve. In these challenging circumstances, the IU Polish Studies Center (PSC) has excelled by offering an extensive extracurricular program of entertaining and informative events under the interim directorship of Professor Elizabeth Dunn, Department of Geography. Highlights included the debut of PSC Podcast: i tak dalej... [etcetera], which offered eight interviews with scholars, activists, and artists throughout the year, as well as two Timothy Wiles Memorial Lectures: “Along the Polish-California Border: West Coast Milosz” (postponed from the 2019-20 academic year) by Clare Cavanagh, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University, and “The Worlding of Eastern Europe: Polish Architects in Cold War West Africa” (the 2021 lecture) by Łukasz Stanek, Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Manchester (Princeton University Press, 2020). In addition, the PSC held two graduate student symposia, one with Stanek and the other with Michał Murawski, author of The Palace Complex: A Stalinist Skyscraper, Capitalist Warsaw, and a City Transfixed (IU Press, 2019). Further details about all these events as well as other news of interest to the PSC community can be found in their annual newsletter at: Polish Studies Center Newsletter Spring 2021.Architecture in Global Socialism (Princeton University Press, 2020). In addition, the PSC held two graduate student symposia, one with Stanek and the other with Michał Murawski, author of The Palace Complex: A Stalinist Skyscraper, Capitalist Warsaw, and a City Transfixed (IU Press, 2019). Further details about all these events as well as other news of interest to the PSC community can be found in their annual newsletter at: Polish Studies Center Newsletter Spring 2021.
Anna Bloom is an MA student in the Russian and East European Institute.
Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies