Bernie Koloski and My “Awakening”
I’m always amazed at how little we appreciate what’s before our eyes.
Dr. Bernard Koloski was professor of English at Mansfield for four decades. He was a Fulbright Scholar from 1981-84, teaching in Poland. Lech Walesa was spearheading the Solidarity Movement, helping to topple the Communist government, and Bernie was chipping away at the stodgy American literary establishment.
Bernie is one of the world’s preeminent scholars on American writer Kate Chopin. In terms of the universe, it’s a pretty small niche.
In terms of literature, it’s huge. Bernie and a small group of scholars discovered this writer who had been banished to obscurity by a Puritan society in the late 1800’s. This youthful band of literary renegades recognized the timelessness of Chopin’s prophetic fiction and over the course of 40 years drove her into mainstream higher education.
Because of them, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is now taught in nearly every college literature program in the US.
Over the decades Bernie has written and edited five books on Chopin. He corresponds with scholars, teachers and students around the world. He oversees the Kate Chopin Website which attracts hundreds of visits a day from more than 100 countries.
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Over the years I’ve written news releases, features and stories for The Mansfieldian about Bernie’s travels and accomplishments. But I didn’t truly appreciate him until we recently sat down for a two-part podcast interview on the occasion of his new book Awakenings: The Story of the Kate Chopin Revival.
Editing an audio interview takes a lot of time. You listen to words and sentences over and over, snipping pauses, stutters, repeated phrases. But I came away each time refreshed by Bernie’s enthusiasm, his love of his subject, his broad vision and his humility.
The interview opened my eyes to the fact that we had one of the world’s leading scholars in a subject walking around campus, teaching and writing for nearly 40 years and few people outside his department really appreciated him. It’s that dratted “backyard syndrome.”
It also made me appreciate that Mansfield University has other scholars. We have some of the best professors anywhere, but because we know them personally, sit over a coffee or in some committee, we forget their accomplishments.
Students can be forgiven for not appreciating the gift they’re getting with many of our professors who are recognized leaders in their fields. Or the profs who study and teach with a passion that never seems to burn out despite the committees and endless reams of papers to grade.
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I single out Bernie because somehow he finally switched on the light of recognition for me, for all that he’s accomplished in a way so quiet and self-effacing that he slipped right by us.
There are many others hidden in departments around campus who are accomplishing a lot in and outside the classroom. And we should take a moment in our busy lives to appreciate them.
They, like Bernie, have a passion for that ever-changing concept called knowledge.