Undergraduate students will be able to pursue bachelor’s degrees in Polish in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, starting in the fall of 2008.
One of the few such programs of its kind in the United States, the new major requires two years of Polish language study to enter the program. Students must complete 27 hours of additional course work focused on Polish language, literature, culture and history.
U-M’s Polish language program teaches four levels every year. Initiated by Bogdana Carpenter, professor of Polish from 1983-2007, the program gives students a unique opportunity to specialize and major in Polish.
The Polish language and literature faculty currently includes Benjamin Paloff, assistant professor and postdoctoral scholar in the Michigan Society of Fellows, and lecturers Ewa Malachowska-Pasek and Piotr Westwalewicz.
For more than a century, the University has maintained strong Polish connections, welcoming scholars, professionals and students of Polish origin to its various disciplines and departments. The state of Michigan has more than 850,000 Polish-Americans.
In addition to the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Michigan is home of the Copernicus Endowment and the Center for Russian and East European Studies (CREES), a U.S. Department of Education-designated National Resource Center and one of the nation’s foremost institutes for interdisciplinary research and training on Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and Eurasia.
For more information about the new Bachelor of Arts in Polish language and literature go to www.lsa.umich.edu/slavic or www.ii.umich.edu/crees/events/regionalprog/polish.
For more on U-M’s Center for Russian and East European Studies, go to www.ii.umich.edu/crees.
