2017

Honorable Mention: John Kulczycki
Title: Belonging to the Nation: Inclusion and Exclusion in the Polish-German Borderlands, 1939-1951  (Harvard University Press)

Belonging to the Nation is a study of the preeminence of nationality as a category of identity, while illustrating the historical pitfalls and limitations of just such a method of categorization. The book shows how the state, whether Nazi Germany or Communist Poland, used similar techniques and modes of thought as authorities sought to sort out the national belonging of the complex, often nationally indifferent populations who lived in the overlapping spaces of their shifting borders. It illustrates how in the 1940s, there were still plenty of people for whom ethnonationalist categories offered a poor fit, and conveys, often through personal testimony, the tragic consequences of trying to make people fit these categories. Meticulously researched and dispassionately presented, the book makes a major contribution to the study of nationalism and the political and social history of one of Europe’s multilingual and multiconfessional borderlands.

Winner: Paul Brykczynski