Michał Choiński teaches literature at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. Choiński’s research focuses on Digital Humanities and the literature of the American South. His latest book “Southern Hyperboles” came out with Louisiana State University Press in 2020. He has published essays, poems and translations of poetry in journals in Poland, US, UK and Canada. Choiński’s pamphlet, “Gifts Without Wrapping” came out with the Hedgehog Press as a winner of a poetry competition. He was a guest lectuer, teaching literature and creative writing at various universities in the US (Yale University, University of South Carolina, Salem State Univesity, and College of Charleston), UK (Queens University), and Italy (University of Padua). In 2020, he was awarded with senior Fulbright Fellowship at Yale University.
What was your pathway to visiting Yale?
It feels like it’s been a long journey, especially in the context of all the historic events in the background. I received my Fulbright Fellowship back in 2020, but then with the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, my stay in New Haven had to be postponed for the next year, and then in May 2021 it turned out that it had to be moved yet again. Then, in February this year Russia invaded Ukraine, and so the influx of war refugees to Poland, and the general increase of anxiety in central Europe definitely contextualized my plans and preparations to come to the US. Now, I’m here, and I’ll spend the whole summer and part of autumn at Yale.
What will you be working on when you are at Yale?
During my stay, I will be using stylometry to verify authorship of selected 18th century manuscripts. By calculating relative frequencies of the most common words, stylometry allows you to determine who wrote a given text, and to build connections between large groups of texts you would not be able to construct manually, with the “naked” readers’ eyes. Those most frequent words form linguistic fingerprints in a text, which you can calculate, so as a research method, stylometry is sometimes compared to forensic linguistics. In Poland, with my colleagues, Maciej Eder and Jan Rybicki, we’ve done similar stylometric projects, like determining the authorship of Harper Lee’s two novels. In 2019, I was invited by Professor Kenneth Minkema to come to Yale, and to use Digital Humanities methods, like stylometry, to help advance research on colonial history. But, it’s not only quantitative research. I’ll be also collecting materials for my third book project on literary representations of homecoming in the literature of the American South. I hope the monograph will be ready by 2024.
How will you be working with Yale students?
Given the fact that I’ll be here in the summer, I don’t think I will have much contact with Yale students. Maybe in October, I will be invited to join some classes. But, that’s it. My senior Fulbright Fellowship is a research position.
How will you be working with Yale researchers?
Yes, of course. I’m in contact with Professor Kenneth Minkema, but during my stay, I do hope to be able to cooperate also with researchers from the English Department.
What are you most looking forward to doing or visiting when at Yale?
Definitely the libraries – I’ve done research at Beinecke and at Sterling in the past, but these were short visits. Now, I’ll be able to make full use of all the fantastic resources there. Also, with the beginning of the academic year, I’ll be looking forward to open lectures, guest talks and Department meetings. I know that, for instance, Natasha Trethewey, one of my favorite poets, will do a reading at Beinecke in September. I cannot wait to attend that event.