Polish Studies Article Prize 2024 Winner
We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2024 BASEES Polish Studies Article Prize.
Winner
Matilda Mroz, “Earth After Death: Posthumous Cinematic Ecologies in Holocaust
Documentary Film.” Studies in World Cinema 3, no. 1 (2023): 39–60.
Matilda Mroz's original and lucidly-written article provides a profound analysis of
cinematic attempts at recomposing earth in the aftermath of genocide. It deftly
navigates the intersection of environmental studies and Holocaust cinema, shedding
light on the filmic engagements with sites of decomposition and earth's response to
atrocity. With meticulous attention to detail and a deeply conversant grasp of posthumanist
theory, Mroz challenges traditional frameworks, offering a nuanced
examination of attempts to capture the earth's witness to historical trauma in
documentary film. Through an exploration of three documentaries, "Shtetl,"
"Neighbours," and "Birthplace," Mroz unveils the intricate web of posthumous
ecology, where the earth itself becomes a silent testimony to violence and suffering.
By tracing the connections between rural activities and Holocaust aftermaths, Mroz
exposes the profound and problematic implications of framing landscapes scarred by
violence. With its rich theoretical underpinnings and thought-provoking insights,
"Earth After Death" stands as a particularly important contribution to film studies and
Polish studies.
Judges
Professor Natalia Nowakowska (University of Oxford)
Dr Katarzyna Nowak (University of Vienna)
Polish Studies Article Prize 2023 Winner
The BASEES Polish Studies Group is delighted to announce the winner of the Polish Studies Article Prize 2023
This year we received a high number of nominations for the annual prize, attracting many excellent articles and book chapters by both established and emerging scholars in the broadly understood field of Polish Studies.
The Prize was funded by the Norman Davies Polish Studies Foundation.
Winner: J. Mackenzie Pierce, “Global Chopin: The 1949 Centenary and Polish Internationalism during the Early Cold War,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 75, no. 3, 2022: 487–545.
J. Mackenzie Pierce’s original and inspiring article explores Polish Cold War internationalism through the lens of the 1949 Chopin Year. By delving into post-World War II musicology and musical diplomacy, the author has skilfully navigated through complex historical, social, and political landscapes to unveil a captivating story of the Chopin celebration as a large-scale cultural mobilization in state-socialist Poland. Drawing on a rich array of archival sources from Polish ministries, musical institutions, and diplomatic missions, Pierce analyses with precision the changing image of Chopin in Polish nationalism and politics from the 1840s to 1940s, and maps out the actors (including non-Communist groups in Poland) which mobilised together for the international Chopin Year. This well-researched article engages readers with its thought-provoking analysis, presenting novel interpretations and nuanced understandings of the global networks of the early Cold War. In doing so, it offers a compelling model which brings Polish and global history into dialogue with one another.
Honourable mention
Natalia Jarska and Agata Ignaciuk, “Marriage, Gender and Demographic Change: Managing Fertility in State-Socialist Poland,” Slavic Review, 81(1), 2022: 142-162.
The Jury would also like to commend the article co-authored by Natalia Jarska and Agata Ignaciuk for generating new insights into the fertility management practices in socialist Poland by skillfully analysing a vast array of primary sources.
Judges
Professor Natalia Nowakowska (University of Oxford)
Dr Katarzyna Nowak (Central European University)
Polish Studies Article Prize 2022 Winner
The prize committee (Ania Płomień and Ewa Stańczyk) received a number of submissions, representing a variety of disciplinary approaches and covering a wide range of topics. The competition attracted many outstanding entries from both established and emerging scholars in the field. The committee is delighted to announce two joint winners of the 2021 BASEES PSG Polish Article Prize.
They are:
Anna Dobrowolska and Bohdana Kurylo
Anna Dobrowolska, “‘Everyone dreams about leaving’: Debates on Human Trafficking in State-Socialist Poland”, Journal of Women’s History 33/4 (2021), 168-193.
In this elegantly written article, Anna Dobrowolska explores how the debates around human trafficking in late-socialist Poland spoke to a growing disillusionment with the system and expressed a wider concern over the state of socialist economy. Using a wide range of archival and newspaper sources, Dobrowolska discusses how socialist women used their agency as sex workers to probe the limits of Gierek’s modernization project, and in so doing, were able to defy restrictive travel regimes and participate in Western-style consumerism. The official discourse, too, employed the theme of sex trafficking to reinforce the image of protective state which was to nurture traditional gender roles and defend socialist women from Western mores.
The prize committee was deeply impressed with Dobrowolska’s solid methodology, original primary sources, and clear argumentation. Her article makes an important contribution to the field of social history and women’s studies, and admirably demonstrates that the specific Polish context can provide a window into a wider history of state-society relations during the Cold War.
Bohdana Kurylo, “Counter-populist performances of (in)security: Feminist resistance in the face of right-wing populism in Poland”, Review of International Studies 48/2 (2022), 262-281. Online first December 2021.
Bohdana Kurylo analyses collective feminist performances of (in)security enacted during the All-Poland Women’s Strike of 2020-2021. The author skilfully challenges the tendency of International Relations scholarship to view populism, security, and gender through a predominantly negative prism. Set against the backdrop of right-wing populist constructions of (in)security in Poland staged through the annual Independence March, Kurylo argues that the Women’s Strike represents a subversion of right-wing populist constructions of (in)security and inaugurates an alter-populist politics pivoting on ‘the feminist people’. She, thus, encourages a more capacious and contextualised conceptualisation of populism, which bears implications for theory and practice. Kurylo’s conceptual contribution is delivered though a performative analytical approach wherein she mobilises a rich archive of textual and visual empirical material to demonstrate how plural political subjectivities are formed. The significance of this approach lies in the weight she gives to “the agency of the so-called populist ‘audiences’”, highlighting the embodied power struggle of actors on the ground.
Overall, the article’s contribution lies in its abundant empirical detail, rigorous and sophisticated application of feminist methodology, thorough theorisation and extension of conceptual frameworks, and relevance to the politics of struggle in the current Polish context and beyond. The article will be of interest to audiences far broader than Polish Studies, Security Studies and Social Movement Studies.
Congratulations to Anna and Bohdana on this achievement!
For more details about the Prize, please contact Dr Katarzyna Nowak: katarzyna.nowak@univie.ac.at