2017 Aquila Polonica Prize Winner
Geneviève Zubrzycki was awarded the 2017 Aquila Polonica Prize for best English-language article published during the previous year on any aspect of Polish studies. The award was given at the 2017 annual meeting of the Polish Studies Association (PSA), which was held on Friday, November 10, 2017 in conjunction with the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies Convention in Chicago.
The biennial Aquila Polonica Prize is administered by the PSA, which appoints an independent committee of judges. In awarding the prize to Zubrzycki’s 2016 article “Nationalism, ‘Philosemitism,’ and Symbolic Boundary-Making in Contemporary Poland” (Comparative Studies in Society and History, 58(1):66-98), the PSA found that Zubrzycki brilliantly frames the “Jewish revival” in Poland—synthesizing a now considerable body of research—to press for a more supple application of key sociological theories of nationalism and group identity.
The PSA judges felt that Zubrzycki’s article is an outstanding contribution to Polish studies, which presents its topic in an engaging, well-researched, and nuanced way; juxtaposes philo-Semitic with anti-Semitic discourse; and frames both in the context of reformulations of nation. This allows us to understand these practices much better, as well as see their further repercussions, and rethink more general mechanisms governing nations. All in all, the article is profound and full of insight. It is meticulously scholarly but also written in an accessible and lively manner.
The award carries a $500 honorarium donated by Aquila Polonica Publishing.
Zubrzycki is a comparative-historical and cultural sociologist who studies national identity and religion, collective memory and national mythology, and the contested place of religious symbols in the public sphere. She is the director of the Weiser Center for Europe & Eurasia and on the faculty at the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, both at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
L-R: PSA president Agnieszka Pasieka; Genevieve Zubrzycki; Aquila Polonica president Terry Tegnazian
