2020 Recipient

The Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies (formerly the Orbis Book Prize), established in 1996 and sponsored by the Kulczycki family, former owners of the Orbis Books Ltd. of London, England, is awarded annually for the best book in any discipline, on any aspect of Polish affairs, published in the previous calendar year.

Winner: Lenny A. Ureña Valerio
Title: Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840–1920 (Ohio University Press)

Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities is a thought-provoking work of colonial and postcolonial history, which problematizes and recasts race, medicine, and nationalism for export by triangulating Polish, German, and Latin American history. Lenny Ureña Valerio builds upon her extensive fieldwork in Brazil, Germany, and Poland, presenting a volume that engages imaginaries of East and South to discover affinities and build bridges across multiple scholarly fields, methodologies, and seemingly distant research agendas.

Lenny Ureña Valerio has been awarded the 2020 Kulczycki Prize for her work Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities for its nuanced, clever, and innovative incorporation of post-colonial studies and studies on the history of the Polish lands; for breaking down national divisions in historiography and offering a transnational approach that illuminates a Polish colonial idea through the lens of regional, imperial, and transcontinental history; and for incorporating diverse scholarly approaches that highlight new connections between the state, science, migration movements, and settler colonialism.

Honorable Mention: Jessie Labov