DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

 

Michał J. Wilczewski, Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS), is a historian of modern East-Central Europe who specializes in Poland and Polish culture. At Northwestern, he regularly teaches Polish language, literature, culture, history, and history of sexuality courses. He also serves as the faculty advisor of the Polish American Student Alliance (PASA) and is a Faculty Associate for Willard Residential College.

A historian of everyday life, he is interested in telling the stories of ordinary people and marginalized populations in their quest to gain recognition and access to state power. He has published articles in Polish and English about the everyday lives of farmers and their work in rural youth organizations and women’s agricultural circles. His current research project, Indecent: Pornography and Morality in Interwar Poland, examines discourses concerning morality in Poland after the First World War and the people (artists, film directors, book publishers, actors) and spaces (movie theaters, literary circles, and theaters) involved in the production of what was then considered “pornography.”

Wilczewski holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Illinois at Chicago, an MA in history from Michigan State University, and a BA in sociology from La Salle University. He is the recipient of a 2013-2014 Fulbright IIE Student Research Grant. Prior to arriving at Northwestern, he worked as a program assistant for Polish Studies and taught Polish history, language, and literature courses at UIC and Loyola University Chicago. In addition to teaching and researching, he has also done some academic translation work.

Publications:

“Nurturing the Nation: Farmwives and the (Home)Making of the Modern Polish Countryside, 1918-1939,” in Gender and Nation in East Central Europe: An Uneasy History edited by Marta Cieślak and Anna Müller (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2025).

“Obcy we własnym domu: Konflikty pokoleniowe i walka o,,wiejskiego człowieka” w międzywojennej Polsce” (“Strangers in Our Own Home: Generational Tensions and the Battle for the Rural Mind and Body in Interwar Poland,”) in Centrum światów jest tutaj: Galicja jako punkt odniesień edited by Tomasz Pudłocki and Jadwiga Sawicka (Rzeszów, Poland: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2021), 49-67.