Konrad Czynski

Dr. Konrad A. Czynski, after his B.A. at Fordham University, Bronx, NY, pursued graduate studies at Columbia University, NYC: M.A. in Chinese History; M.A. in French Literature; M. Phil. and Ph.D. (1984) in French & Comparative Literature focusing on Franco-Japanese art and poetry. His thesis-subject, researched in Paris and Tokyo, was Paul Claudel, a major French poet-playwright-diplomat who lived in China and Japan from the 1880s into the 1930s. Prior to his Columbia Ph.D., he studied Chinese language and culture at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and Japanese language and literature at the Stanford Center, Tokyo, at U.B.C.-Vancouver, and at the U. of Paris-Jussieu. He taught (3 years) in the French Dept. of Barnard College of Columbia U., and in the Comparative Literature Dept. (4 years) at the U. of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, before coming to teach Humanities at Minnesota State University-Moorhead as of 1991. His academic interests include the Visual Arts, World Literature (religious & other), and intercultural Humanities East-West. His courses at MSUM with the East-meets-West thematic are: PHIL 120 World Religions, PHIL 322 Religious Traditions in our Global Society, HUM 320 Humanities East-West, HUM 101 Humanities through the Arts. He has published articles on Claudel, Marguerite Yourcenar, Alfred Jarry, and James Joyce, and has research and literary projects in progress, among which are a play that evokes the American Civil War, and a study of the American artist-photographer William Henry Jackson (1843-1942)’s travels in China, Korea, Japan and India in the 1890s. And in collaboration with Maestro Stephen Simon and his wife, Bonnie, he has performed as narrator (stage-name Yadu) in a CD-series “Stories in Music” that began as youth-concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, during the 1990s. Their 9th CD – Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale – was published in December 2011 by MaestroClassics with unique artwork and educational booklet.