Newswise — Keely Stauter-Halsted, an expert in the history of modern Eastern Europe, Poland, Jewish history, gender history, and the Holocaust, has been named the inaugural Stefan and Lucy Hejna Family Chair in the History of Poland by the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Pending approval of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, her appointment will begin Aug. 16. She is currently interim chair and associate professor of history at Michigan State University.
"Professor Stauter-Halsted's superb contributions in the field of Polish history and Jewish studies make her an exceptional addition to our faculty and the history department," said Dwight A. McBride, dean of the UIC College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "In her role as a Hejna chair, she will help to position UIC as a leader in Polish studies in the near future. I am excited about the academic and cultural contributions that she and our Hejna Chair in language and literature will make to the university and the Chicago community.
Based in the UIC department of history, the Stefan and Lucy Hejna Family Chair in the History of Poland is one of two chairs supported by a $10 million bequest from the late Romuald Hejna. Last month, the college announced that the other chair, in Polish language and literature, will be held by Polish intellectual Michał Paweł Markowski of Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.
"I am delighted to begin working to build Polish Studies at UIC. The Hejna chairs provide the opportunity to make UIC the center of scholarship and teaching about Polish affairs, and to establish links with centers of education in Poland," said Stauter-Halsted, whose modern Poland research focuses on nationalism, gender, peasant studies, and ethnic minorities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. "I could not be more honored to be chosen for this position."
Much of Stauter-Halsted's publications examine non-elite social classes and excluded population groups in Polish society. Her work has also explored Polish-Jewish relations and the history and culture of Jewish communities in Poland.
Among her publications is "The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Rural National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848-1900" (2001), which won the Polish Studies Association's Orbis Prize for outstanding book on Polish affairs in 2002.
Prior to being named interim chair of history at Michigan State in 2009, Stauter-Halsted served four years as associate chair and director of graduate studies. She directed Michigan State's Jewish studies program from 2002 to 2004.
She has been active in East European studies programs, study abroad in Poland, and several organizations associated with the American Association of Slavic Studies, including as a board member with the Polish Studies Association. She is a frequent speaker at conferences featuring scholars from Central and Eastern Europe and North America.
Stauter-Halsted earned a bachelor's degree in history from Whitman College. She received a master's degree in Russian and East European studies and a doctorate in history from the University of Michigan.
With more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is UIC's largest college. It comprises more than 20 departments and programs offering over 40 undergraduate major fields of specialization, 40 minors, nearly 50 graduate degrees at the master's and doctoral levels and almost 1,000 courses. The college features programs in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.
The Hejna donation, which represents the second-largest gift from an individual to UIC and the largest single gift to the college, aims to distinguish UIC as the U.S. leader in Polish history, language and literature studies.
UIC ranks among the nation's leading research universities and is Chicago's largest university with 26,000 students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state's major public medical center. A hallmark of the campus is the Great Cities Commitment, through which UIC faculty, students and staff engage with community, corporate, foundation and government partners in hundreds of programs to improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas around the world.
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