Dominic A. Pacyga

Pacyga was born on May 1, 1949, in Chicago. His parents were Joseph B. Pacyga and Pauline Walkosz, the children of Polish Górals from Podhale who immigrated to the United States prior to World War I. His father won two Bronze Stars, a Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts, serving in the 3rd Armored Division in Europe in 1944–45. His mother first worked in the Canning Department at Armour & Company and then in the Chicago Chrysler Plant that built B-29 engines. Pacyga grew up in Chicago's Back of the Yards neighborhood and was educated at Sacred Heart of Jesus parochial school, and the De La Salle Institute. He worked as a livestock handler and a security guard in the Union Stock Yard while attending college. Pacyga matriculated at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where he earned a BA in 1971, an MA in 1973, and a PhD in 1981. His dissertation on Polish workers in Chicago's South Side, 1880 to 1921, was supervised by Professor Leo Schelbert and had financial support from the Polish American Congress, the Kosciuszko Foundation, and the Polish American Scholarship Fund. ==Career==

Pacyga was an instructor, Family and Community History Center, Newberry Library, in Chicago, where he first developed bus tours of the city's neighborhoods. He became associate director of Columbia College's "Southeast Chicago Historical Project" (1981–1984), a large-scale public history project in the city's Steel District. He then joined the faculty of Columbia College in 1984 as an unranked professor. He also was a visiting professor in the college of the University of Chicago in 1990–91. Pacyga was a visiting professor of history at the University of Illinois Chicago in 1992, and is currently an Affiliated Faculty member of the History Department. He eventually became a full professor once rank was finally granted to the faculty in 2005 at Columbia College Chicago. Pacyga was a visiting fellow at Campion Hall Oxford University, in 2005. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, in 2013–2014. Before retiring in 2017 he served as interim department chair and also as interim dean of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Pacyga was a visiting professor of history at the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 1992, and is currently an Affiliated Faculty member of the History Department. In 2021, he lectured at the 4th International Conference Studying Public History held at the University of Wrocław in Poland. Pacyga has been active in presenting public lectures and appearing in several documentaries, including Chicago: City of the Century and several episodes of ‘’Chicago Stories’’. Since 1976 Pacyga has presented bus tours of Chicago's neighborhoods focusing on the historical, economic, and demographic trends that created the city. He has also worked on museum exhibits for the Chicago Architecture Foundation; the Museum of Science and Industry; the Chicago Historical Museum; and the Polish Museum of America. He was head researcher from 2017 to 2024 for the Back Home: Polish Chicago exhibit at the Chicago History Museum. Currently he is Curator of Exhibits at the Packingtown Museum in Chicago. From March 2018 to March 2019, Pacyga had a weekly podcast concerning Polish Chicago’s history on the WPNA-FM website. These were translated into Polish and appeared in the weekend edition of the Dziennik Związkowy. Pacyga is a board member of the Society of Midland Authors. He has been a Board member of the Urban History Association, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, the Polish American Historical Association, and the Lira Ensemble. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. ==Honors and evaluations==

Pacyga has won several academic awards. He won the Catholic Book Award in 1986 for Chicago: City of Neighborhoods. In 1991, Pacyga won the Oskar Halecki Award for Best Book on a Polish American Topic from the Polish American Historical Association for his book Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago: Workers on the South Side, 1880-1922. In 1999 and 2011, Pacyga won the Columbia College Chicago Excellence in Teaching Award. Pacyga, in 2014, received the Miecislaus Haiman Award from the Polish American Historical Association. In 2016 Pacyga was awarded the Illinois State Historical Society's Russell P. Strange Memorial Book of the Year Award for Slaughterhouse. He won the Oskar Halecki Award from the Polish American Historical Association, Best Book on a Polish American Topic in 2019 and the like named Oskar Halecki Award of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America in 2019 for American Warsaw: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Polish Chicago. In 2022 he was awarded the Medal Komisji Edukacji Narodowej (Medal of the Commission of National Education). In 2024 the Association of Polish Journalists in America gave Pacyga the Outstanding Polish Personality Award. In 2025, Pacyga won the Frederick Jackson Turner Lifetime Achievement in Midwestern History Award from the Midwestern History Association. That year he also received the Złoty Krzyż Zasługi (Golden Cross of Merit) from President of Poland Andrzej Duda. According to Professor Halina Parafianowicz of the University of Bialystok, American Warsaw: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Polish Chicago is, "a credible, solid, and well-researched history of Polonia’s Chicago. It provides a legitimate perspective and sheds new light on its experience through various stages of its past and present, as the title suggests- -from rise to fall to rebirth. It is an accurate and valuable contribution to the scholarly literature on Chicago and Polonia." ==References==