The Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies presents:
Piotr Kosicki
Assistant Professor of History, University of Maryland
“Between Polish Catholicism and Global
Catholicism: Blurring the Boundaries of Church,
State, and Nation in a Cold War World”
A Lecture followed by Open Discussion
Thursday, September 19, 5:00 P.M.
Nau Hall 342
Open to faculty, students & the public
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Prof. Kosicki was formerly an ACLS New Faculty Fellow in the Corcoran Department of History and
Associate Director of the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of
Virginia.
Pope John Paul II has already entered the annals of both Catholic and European history as both a
quintessentially Polish pope and a genuinely global actor who spent his papacy trying to evangelize and
strengthen the Catholic Church worldwide. However paradoxical this seems, his story is but the apogee of a
long narrative of Polish involvement in a transnational, ultimately global narrative of Catholicism’s
transformation in the 20th century that eclipses standard analytical paradigms of Church, State, and
nation. This talk will offer a critical alternative narrative, guided on the one hand by the transformation of
Catholic approaches to the social question and on the other by the shifting geopolitics of Roman
Catholicism, involving a particular opening for Eastern Europe in general and Poland in particular.
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For questions, please contact Anna Kromin ([email protected])
CREEES Website: http://www.virginia.edu/creees