WILCZEK Piotr

Born on 26 April 1962 in Chorzow; son of the artist Paweł Wilczek and the doctor Jadwiga, née Węgrzecka. He spent the early part of his childhood in Zabrze before moving to Katowice in 1966. He joined the Adam Mickiewicz Grammar School No. III in Katowice in 1977. During this period, he was twice a participant in the Olympiad in Polish Literature and Language, reaching the final on one occasion before winning it on the other. After completing advanced secondary education in 1981, he started a degree in Polish philology at the University of Silesia (UŚ), studying on the individual programme under Prof. Jan Malicki. He made his debut as a literary scholar in 1983 with the short essays Kultura i pamięć (Culture and Memory) that were published by the Polish Students' Association's (ZSP) Student Cultural Centre. During this period, his first translations of poetry from English into Polish appeared in the student periodical "Remedium" (no. 1), which was published in Sosnowiec by Piwnica Literacka (Literary Cellar). He was also active as a literary critic. In 1984, he started collaborating with the Warsaw-based monthly "Przegląd Powszechny", where he continued to contribute articles and reviews until 1989. He published his first volume of poetry, Nowe przygody Seneki (Seneca's New Adventures), in 1985. The following year, he graduated with a master's degree and was employed as an assistant at the Institute of Polish Literature and Culture at UŚ (which became the Institute of the Study of Polish Literature, INoLP, in 1991, and was named after Ireneusz Opacki in 2005), initially working at the Department of the History of Old Polish, Enlightenment and Romantic Literature and then at the Department of the History of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, as well as at the Centre for Rhetoric. He was a postgraduate fellow at the University of Oxford in 1988. His research focused primarily on older and contemporary Polish and English-language literature, Renaissance and Reformation culture, the theory and praxis of artistic translation, and comparative literary and cultural studies. He published articles, reviews, poems and translations from English in periodicals including "Student" (1986-87 and 1989), "Poezja" (1988), "Ogród" (1989 and 1991-93), "Pamiętnik Literacki" (1989), "FA-art" (1990, 1992-93, and 1999), "Twórczość" (1994), "Tytuł" (1994), "Życie Duchowe" (1994-95), "Nowe Książki" (1996-2003; here: numerous reviews), and "Śląsk" (1997-98). He completed the Interfaculty Postgraduate Study Programme in Neo-Latin at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Lodz (UŁ) in 1989. In 1990/91, he was a doctoral fellow at the Jagiellonian University (UJ) in Krakow, studying under Prof. Andrzej Borowski. In 1992, he was awarded a doctoral degree from UŚ for his dissertation Erazm Otwinowski. Studium z dziejów literatury ariańskiej w XVI wieku (Erazm Otwinowski: A study in the history of sixteenth-century Arian literature), which was supervised by Prof. J. Malicki. He was appointed lecturer in November 1992. He was also involved in teaching foreign students Polish language and culture. From 1992, each August he organized lectures and seminars for international students on the history of Polish literature and culture at the School of Polish Language and Culture at the University of Silesia (UŚ). In 1994, he received the Artistic Prize of the Katowice Voivode for young artists in recognition of his achievements in 1993. In 1995/96, he was deputy director of artistic-programmatic affairs at Ars Cameralis Silesiae Superioris (the Upper Silesian Festival of Chamber Music), a cultural institution of the Silesian Voivodeship Government. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London, in 1996 and also received several short-term grants to visit British universities, including fellowships as a visiting translator at the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (1994 and 1996). He joined the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages in 1998. He also taught courses on Polish literature and culture as a visiting professor at US-American universities: Rice University, Houston (1998/1999), the University of Illinois in Chicago (1999/2000 and 2000/2001) – as a fellow of the Kościuszko Foundation – and the University of Chicago (2000/2001). In 2000, he joined the editorial board of the journal "The Sarmatian Review" (Houston, TX; he published articles there in 1999, 2009, and 2012). He was awarded a habilitation degree from UŚ in 2001 for his study Dyskurs – przekład – interpretacja. Literatura staropolska i jej trwanie we współczesnej kulturze (Discourse, Translation, Interpretation: Old Polish literature and its legacies in contemporary culture). Between 2002 and 2008, he was dean of the Faculty of Philology at UŚ. During this period, he was chair of the District Committee of the Olympiad in Polish Literature and Language in Katowice before joining the Main Committee of the Olympiad that is based at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN). He published articles, essays and reviews in "Chicago Review" (2000), "Polish Review" (2001), "Zeszyty Naukowe KUL" (2002), "Ogród" (2003), "Postscriptum" (2005), "Opcje" (2007), "Ruch Pedagogiczny" (2009), and "Language and Literary Studies of Warsaw" (2014). Between 2002 and 2012, he was director of the Programme Council of Gliwice Musical Theatre. He was made associate professor at UŚ in 2003. In 2003/04, he was acting Chair in Classical Philology. He became a member of the Polish Philological Society in 2004. He was made state-appointed professor in 2006. He joined the Polish Academy of Sciences' Committee on Literary Studies (KNoL PAN) in 2007. He moved to Warsaw in 2008, where he was appointed full professor at the "Artes Liberales" Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies (which in 2012 became the Faculty of "Artes Liberales" at the University of Warsaw [UW]) and deputy directory of the College of Inter-area Individual Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at UW, serving in the latter role until 2013. In March 2009, he was appointed director of the "Artes Liberales" College at UW. From 2008 to 2010, he was a visiting scholar collaborating with research and teaching projects in the Art and Sciences Honors Program at Boston College, USA. In July 2009, he became involved in the work of Cultures of Knowledge. An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters, an international research project based at the University of Oxford. That year, he was appointed an expert serving on the Ministry of National Education project Opracowanie i pilotażowe wdrożenie innowacyjnych programów nauczania, zgodnych z polską podstawą programową kształcenia ogólnego i wymaganiami egzaminacyjnymi, przeznaczonych dla uczniów – dzieci obywateli polskich za granicą (The Development and Pilot Implementation of Innovative Teaching Programmes in accordance with the basic Polish programme in general education and exam norms for school pupils with Polish citizenship abroad). In October 2009, he became director of the international research team that he had founded, the Commission for Research on the Reformation in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe, which was based at the "Artes Liberales" Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies at UW. In 2016, the Commission became the Centre for the Study of the Reformation and Intellectual Culture in Early Modern Europe. In October 2010, he was appointed director of the Doctoral Studies at the "Artes Liberales" Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies. He also taught at several other higher education institutions: the University of Economics and Humanities in Bielsko-Biała, the College for Foreign Languages in Czestochowa, the Polish Teachers' Union Higher School of Education in Warsaw, the Humanitas University in Sosnowiec, and the Vistula University in Warsaw. In 2010, he joined the editorial board of "Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce", a journal on the Renaissance and Reformation in Poland published by the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IH PAN). In 2011, he started collaborating with the Polish Studies Initiative at Cleveland State University and also joined the editorial board of the journal "Reformation and Renaissance Review", which is published by the UK-based Society for Reformation Studies. That year, he joined the Society of Literary Translators, the Scientific Council of the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy Sciences and the Scientific Council of both the International Reformation Research Consortium (RefoRC) and the Post-Reformation Digital Library. He became a member of the editorial board of the online Protestant quarterly, "pismo er" in 2013, the same year that he became Chair of the Board of the Club of Kościuszko Foundation Fellows Association, while in 2014 he became the New York-based Foundation's representative in Poland. He has given several dozen talks at international academic conferences and over a dozen guest lectures at international universities, including Harvard and Oxford (both in 2010). In November 2016, he was appointed Polish ambassador to the United States. He is the recipient of the Medal of the Commission of National Education (2005), the Gold Honour for Services to the University of Silesia (2005) and the Decoration of Honor Meritorious for Polish Culture (2006). Before moving to Washington, he lived in Warsaw.