This article addresses the growing need to redesign Polish as a foreign language (PFL) textbooks to better reflect twenty-first-century Poland’s cultural and social diversity and its Polish-speaking communities abroad. Building on prior studies in Polish language pedagogy, the article highlights the disconnect between popular PFL textbooks and the realities of contemporary Polish-speaking society—whether among heritage speakers, in contemporary Polish lifestyles and cultural landscapes, or in the North American classroom. The article introduces four forum contributions from PFL instructors in Poland and the United States who offer practical insights and teaching scenarios based on their experience with heterogeneous student populations. These contributions advocate for a more representative approach to PFL teaching materials, challenging the conventional underrepresentation of East Asia versus its increasingly visible presence in the Polish cultural landscape, the invisibility of Polish heritage speakers outside of Poland, outdated portrayals of everyday Polish lifestyles, and preference for middle-class views and activities in textbooks. Ultimately, the forum aims to inspire new developments in PFL pedagogy and provide practical strategies for instructors to incorporate these topics into the Polish language classroom.

Krzysztof E. Borowski is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin– Madison, where he teaches courses in the Polish language sequence, Polish-American experience, Polish comedy, and Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS). His research interests include multilingualism and identity in East-Central Europe, transna- tional studies, sociolinguistics, and critical discourse studies. His work has been pub- lished in the Slavic and East European Journal, Journal of Slavic Linguistics, Studies in East European Cinema, and Brill’s Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics. Since 2024, he has been serving as President of the North American Association of Teachers of Polish (NAATPl).

The paper examines the needs and characteristics of Polish heritage speakers in relation to their representations in Polish textbooks currently used in the United States. Polish heritage speakers constitute approximately half of the students enrolled in Polish courses, yet no recent textbooks have been designed specifically for this group. Furthermore, the current Polish textbooks, though developed in Poland, not only fail to address the needs of this audience but also overlook Polish immigrants, who are an integral part of Polish culture. The paper suggests strategies to supplement existing materials, including the incorporation of carnivalesque language and the exploration of regional Polish dialects. Additionally, it highlights the importance of positioning heritage Polish as one of many valid variants of the language rather than a substandard form, while ensuring that the teaching of academic Polish remains uncompromised. By doing so, the paper aims to foster a more inclusive and effective approach to teaching Polish heritage speakers.

Izolda Wolski-Moskoff is an Associate Instructional Professor at the University of Chicago. She holds a PhD in Slavic linguistics from The Ohio State University, where her research focused on heritage Polish. Her work examines the linguistic features of heritage Polish and the experiences of the Polish diaspora in the United States. She is the author of the chapter “Poles and Their Language in the U.S. ‘Melting Pot’: How Polish Is Preserved and/or Lost in Chicago,” published in Polish as a Heritage Language Around the World. She is currently completing a second-year Polish textbook, Pani Kowalska, and previously served seven years on the board of the North American Association of Teachers of Polish, including four as president.

As Asian cultures gain more exposure and popularity in Poland, it becomes essential to address the lag between the situation on the ground and the curricular materials used in Polish language classes. In the United States, Polish language programs remain relatively insular, populated mostly by students of Polish descent; they struggle to attract students from other backgrounds. While Asians are a growing minority in Poland, they are a significant presence on US college campuses and represent prime targets for recruitment. Given that the Polish language textbooks used in the United States are predominantly published in Poland, this article discusses how Asians are represented in these textbooks and offers suggestions for instructors to broaden the appeal of Polish to students of East Asian descent. Including minorities in more aspects of course curricula not only better reflects Poland’s evolving multicultural society but also is important in broadening the appeal of Polish language programs.

Tony H. Lin i is an Assistant Professor of the Practice and the Russian/Slavic Coordinator at Boston College. A Taiwanese-American, Lin has won numerous grants to study and live in Poland, Russia, Germany, and France. He has published on Polish and Russian music and literature, ranging from Wyspiański’s Wesele and Chopin-inspired texts in The Chopin Review to a chapter on musical adaptations of Tolstoy’s works in Tolstoy in Context and an article on Iwaszkiewicz’s poems. Lin has taught Polish and Russian languages and literatures at Boston College, University of Pittsburgh, Connecticut College, and University of California, Berkeley, where he received his PhD. Lin is also an accomplished pianist, having graduated from Northwestern University’s School of Music with a degree in piano performance and given numerous recitals in the United States and Europe.

The article advocates for the inclusion of the most up-to-date Polish vocabulary, often derived from English words, in textbooks for teaching Polish as a foreign language. The rationale behind this claim is that many recent Polish vocabulary items reflect the contemporary lifestyle of Poles. The article discusses four main groups of neologisms. First, the most productive conjugation pattern, namely infinitives ending in -ować, which includes many verbs referring to Internet and online activities. Second, words with the suffixes -holik/-holiczka, which denote various hobbies and passions. Third, numerous new culinary terms that reflect Poles’ preference for foreign cuisines as well as the growing importance of vegetarianism and veganism in Poland. Finally, the article analyzes the phenomenon of hybrid words combining Polish roots with the English gerund ending -ing, often used to describe leisure activities. The article argues that incorporating the newest Polish vocabulary into Polish as a foreign language classes would help present a more accurate depiction of Polish society today.

Justyna Zych is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Polish Studies at the University of Warsaw. She completed her PhD in Literature at the University of Warsaw. She studied or conducted research at Sorbonne Université, Université de Genève, University of Cambridge, and Université Libre de Bruxelles. She teaches Polish culture and literature to foreigners, as well as Polish as a foreign language. From 2014 to 2016, she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto. In 2020, she received the Fulbright Slavic Award and taught at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is the author, co-author, or editor of several books, including L’Influence de la psychanalyse sur la critique littéraire en France (1914–1939) and Od Bator do Tokarczuk. Najnowsze powieści polskie w perspek- tywie glottodydaktycznej.

Despite its relevance to equity and inclusion, social class remains an underexamined dimension in foreign language education and applied linguistics. This article investigates how Polish as a foreign language (PFL) textbooks—particularly the widely used Hurra!!! Po polsku series—embed and promote middle-class cultural norms aligned with Poland’s intelligentsia. Using the Textbook Categorical Discourse Analysis (TCDA) framework, the study analyzes language acquisition tasks to reveal how these materials reflect and reinforce class-based assumptions that may not align with the diverse backgrounds of learners, especially in non-European contexts such as North American universities. The article concludes with pedagogical recommendations and a sample lesson scenario aimed at helping educators critically engage with representations of social class in PFL instruction, offering a model that can be adapted to other languages and educational settings.

Krzysztof E. Borowski is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Polish Studies at the University of Warsaw. She completed her PhD in Literature at the University of Warsaw. She studied or conducted research at Sorbonne Université, Université de Genève, University of Cambridge, and Université Libre de Bruxelles. She teaches Polish culture and literature to foreigners, as well as Polish as a foreign language. From 2014 to 2016, she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto. In 2020, she received the Fulbright Slavic Award and taught at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is the author, co-author, or editor of several books, including L’Influence de la psychanalyse sur la critique littéraire en France (1914–1939) and Od Bator do Tokarczuk. Najnowsze powieści polskie w perspek- tywie glottodydaktycznej.

This article examines the “philosophical novel” One’s Own Fate, written in 1916 (published in 1923) by the Soviet-Armenian author Marietta Shaginian, as perhaps the first literary representation of psychoanalysis. Taking place at a sanatorium in the North Caucasus, it features the activity of psychiatrists and their nervous patients, giving a cross-section of mental illness of the time and describing a unique psychotherapeutic method developed at the fictional sanatorium. This takes shape against discussions of various philosophical and psychological schools, like psychoanalysis, but also in connection to Kant, Goethe, Nietzsche, revivalist Orthodoxy, and other influential cultural movements. I examine how the plot partly rests on a critique of theo sophy and mysticism, reflecting Shaginian’s own growing alienation from, and waning dedication to, the Symbolist movement (destined to be replaced by Marxism-Leninism only later). I argue Shaginian was responding in part to the fallout of the feud between Andrei Belyi and Emilii Metner over the outsized influence of Rudolph Steiner’s anthroposophy on Symbolism, an episode in which, surprisingly, psychoanalysis played an important role—what wound itself into One’s Own Fate. While its plot of desire, madness, and intrigue was commonplace for the time, setting it among psychiatrists produced a thor- oughly entertaining and historically significant work. Furthermore, One’s Own Fate offers a literary critique of the greater social ills during the late Russian imperial mo- ment, showing how deep the discourse of psychodynamic psychology had penetrated the social fabric.

Nikita Allgire is a Dornsife Postdoctoral Fellow in General Education at the University of Southern California, where he received his PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures. He is a former Research Fellow with the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) and a member of the International Association for Spielrein Studies. As a literary and intellec- tual historian, he focuses on early twentieth-century Modernism in the Russian context. His current book project, Anatomy of the Drives, examines the influence of psychoanaly- sis in the Russian revolutionary period from the perspective of the philosophical concept of drives.

This paper compares Akram Aylisli’s early trilogy People and Trees with Russian and Soviet literature’s various mythologies of childhood, specifically Maxim Gorky’s. Aylisli has expressed enduring admiration for Gorky, whose “pseudoautobiographical” works were a major inspiration for Aylisli’s tale of orphanhood in an Azeri village during the Second World War. I argue that while Aylisli followed the patterns set by Gorky’s pseudoautobiography, he rejuvenated them, discovering certain magical realist elements (fairytales, folkloric “God-building”) in the context of the Thaw, when that school was being used to explore national consciousness by writers throughout the USSR. It goes on to question how Aylisli’s treatment of these elements differs from Gorky’s. Whereas Gorky came to an impasse between reality and magic, caught between loyalties to “bitter truth” and “sublime lies,” Aylisli has a more ironic, nuanced approach, which includes a sober assessment of material reality while retain- ing a sense of profound mystery and unacknowledged truths.

Peter Orte received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and spent three years as an English teacher in Baku, Azerbaijan. His research focuses on nineteenth- to twentieth-century Russian and Azerbaijani literature. He has published articles on the works of Lev Tolstoy, Vaslav Nijinsky, Mikhail Lermontov, and Akram Aylisli. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at Williams College.