Michael Szporer

Michael Szporer is an Associate Professor of Communications and English at the University of Maryland University College. He is also an author, publicist and translator. A Polish-American who immigrated to US as a child, he holds a Ph.D. in English from Indiana University and MA from Indiana University School of Letters.

Szporer has specialized in political censorship and Cold War history, and has authored numerous publications in Central and East European studies, history and cultural studies, including a bilingual anthology of Macedonian poetry prepared for the 25th Anniversary of the Struga Poetry Evenings International Festival. He has translated Ryszard Bugajski's much censored Solidarity era film classic Przesluchanie or Interrogation, which appeared as a book in New Orleans Review Also he is the author of The Strike: Conversations with Solidarity, forthcoming in 2008 from Pennsylvania State University Press. Szporer has had academic appointments at the Ohio State University and at State University of New York College at Buffalo, beginning teaching in the writing program at Yale University.

Among Szporer's distinctions are three Fulbright scholarships to France/Poland (1981-82), former Yugoslavia (Macedonia 1985-6) and to the Soviet Union (year of collapse 1990-91) returning from the Republic of Lithuania and two IREX fellowships. As part of the US premiere of the works of Lithuanian composer Mikalojus Ciurlionis at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress by Professor and Mrs Vytautas Landsbergis, he was formally recognized as the "First Fulbrighter to the Republic of Lithuania 1990." As Washington Director of Foundation for Free Speech, Szporer has served as an advisor to the Solidarity Union leadership (1995-2000) and briefly was editor-in-chief of Chicago monthly, Polish News

Szporer is on Board of Directors of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and a Founding Member of the American Polish Advisory Council, and past president of the National Capital Area Chapter of the Fulbright Association.

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