A general meeting of North American Association of Teachers of Polish (NAATPl) members and several presentations on the teaching of Polish as a foreign language (PFL) mark the 2026 American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) conference in New Orleans this month.
2026 annual NAATPl meeting
As an affiliated organization, the North American Association of Teachers of Polish holds its annual members meeting during the AATSEEL conference each year. This year, the NAATPl general meeting will take place in-person and, technology permitting, online on Friday, February 20, at 12:30 pm CST / 1:30 pm EST. A Zoom meeting link will be distributed among all members beforehand.
The annual NAATPl members meeting is an opportunity for all Polish language professionals to learn about the organization’s recent activities, initiatives, and plans for the near future. Alongside the President’s annual report presentation, the results of annual elections are also announced at the meeting.
Teaching Polish Language and Culture at AATSEEL 2026
In addition to the annual members meeting, the 2026 AATSEEL convention will feature no less than fourteen presentations of interest for Polish language and culture professionals at North American institutions. These include conference papers devoted to the teaching of Polish as a foreign language as well as those oriented more toward literature and culture. In total, five members of the North American Association of Teachers of Polish will present at this year’s conference in New Orleans.
Polish Events at the 2026 AATSEEL Convention
Friday, February 20, 2026
North American Association of Teachers of Polish (NAATPl) Meeting, 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm CST
Zoom link to follow.
3-1 STREAM 2: Beyond the Horizon: New Approaches to Reading and Teaching Polish Culture I – New Readings, 2:30 – 4:30 pm CST
“Teaching Philosophy Through Polish Film” by Łukasz Siciński (Indiana University)
“Reading for Polish Culture. Whose Culture? How Polish?” by Virginia Zickafoose (Independent Scholar)
“The Force of Nature: Biopolitical Reading of Gombrowicz and Lem” by Andrzej Brylak (University of Southern California)
4-1 STREAM 2: Beyond the Horizon: New Approaches to Reading and Teaching Polish Culture II – New Forms, 4:30 – 6:30 pm CST
“Forms and Resonances: Olga Tokarczuk’s Theory of Adventure in Flights” by Łukasz Wodzyński (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
“Utopian Drive and Displacement in Bolesław Prus’s The Doll” by Piotr Kawulok (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
“Toward Immediate Futurization of Life: The Rise and Fall of the Avant-Garde in Interwar Poland” by George Gasyna (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Saturday, February 21, 2026
5-8 Interrogating Crime: Authority and Justice in Late Socialism, 8:00 am – 10:00 am CST
“Crime Novel of the Polish People’s Republic” by Agnieszka Gutthy (Southeastern Louisiana University)
6-2 STREAM 2: Beyond the Horizon: New Approaches to Reading and Teaching Polish Culture III – New Pedagogies, 1:15 pm – 3:15 pm CST
“Dropping Knowledge: Teaching Polish Culture Through Hip Hop” by Alena Aniskiewicz (Michigan State University)
“Beyond the Textbook: Multimodal Approaches to Teaching Polish and LCTLs” by Agnieszka Makles (Rutgers University)
“Teaching Polish Language and Culture Glocally and Locally: Polish Netflix TV Series and their Application to Classroom Pedagogy” by Krzysztof E. Borowski (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
6-13 Teaching the Less Commonly Taught Slavic and East European Languages I, 1:15 pm – 3:15 pm CST
“Beyond the Classroom: Polish Students, Seniors and Literature” by Magdalena Cabaj (University of Toronto) (Paper #4)
8-10 Mapping Cultural Imaginaries: Folklore, Myth, Music, and Place, 5:30 – 7:30 pm CST
“Imaginary Geography in Polish Hip Hop: A Digital Humanities Study in Stereotypes” by Serhii Tereshchenko (University at Albany) (Paper #3)
“For Poland, Before Poland: How Panna Maria, Texas, Became the Plymouth Rock of American Polonia” by Jess Jensen Mitchell (Harvard University) (Paper #4)
Sunday, February 22, 2026
10-6 Session 10-6: Teaching Multiliteracies and Authentic Cultural Texts, 10:30 am – 12:30 pm CST
“Multiliteracies and Intercultural Inquiry in the Polish Language Classroom” by Agnieszka Makles (Rutgers University) (Paper #1)
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