Awards

Fulbright Award - 1995

Poland

President's Award for Distinguished Teaching - 1988

About Ronnie D. Carter

Ronnie Carter, professor of English at IU East, could soon be one of the best known American scholars working on English studies in Poland. He has just mailed away his most recent bibliography on English studies to be published this summer. English Studies in Post-War Poland is forthcoming from the Adam Mickiewicz University Press. He anticipates the finished product to be a nearly 1,000-page national registry of all master's theses, doctoral dissertations and doctor hibilitacje degrees (a post-doctoral degree for a published book other than a dissertation) on English studies in Poland. Carter began his interest in Poland in the early 1980s, making his first trip there in 1984 when he taught the spring semester at Warsaw University. He has been returning at least every summer since then and did a sabbatical in 1995-96. "I like the people and the country very much, and I keep going back."

Carter is also the editor of two volumes of Jack London stories on the Polish market at this time. Northland Tales is a collection of London stories never translated and published in Polish. Samuel and Other Tales includes 25 stories out of print for 50 years or more. Carter says the Polish people have a great fondness for action stories set in faraway places with strange sounding names. London's novels have sold 8.3 million copies and 14.5 million copies of journals, magazines and Sunday supplements have sold in Poland. The only American writer even close to that success is Ernest Hemingway.

English studies as a discipline is very popular in Poland. Carter says there are 12,000 students pursuing degrees in English. He is considering selecting and editing other American writers and publishing collections in Poland.