Pitt Professor Honored With Annual Award Celebrating Polish Culture

PITTSBURGH—Oscar Swan, professor in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures in the School of Arts and Sciences, will be named the laureate of the University of Warsaw's Polonicum Award during a ceremony Nov. 19, in Poland. The award recognizes outstanding achievements in the advancement of Polish culture.

Swan, the first American to win the award, specializes in Polish and Russian linguistics, Old Church Slavic, syntactic and semantic theory, language pedagogy, materials development, and Polish literature. He has been teaching and publishing in the discipline of Polish language and literature for more than 30 years.

Swan is the author of 16 books, including "Grammar of Contemporary Polish" (Slavica Publishers, 2003), which won the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages' award for Best Work in Slavic Linguistics in 2004. Also, his book "Intermediate Rush" (Slavica Publishers, 1986) was awarded the Amicus Poloniae Award by "Poland" magazine.

He regularly teaches the following classes at Pitt: Polish, Polish Short Story, Polish Literature and Culture, Old Church Slavic, Structure of Russian, Russian Morphology, Polish Through Film, and Polish Over the World Wide Web.

The Polonicum Award is administered by the Center of Polish Language and Culture for Foreigners at the University of Warsaw. It was established in 2006 and is under the patronage of the Marshal of the Senate of the Republic of Poland. The award is conferred during ceremonies celebrating the founding of the University of Warsaw in November of each year.

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11/7/08/amm