Oskar Halecki Prize
Established in 1981, the Oskar Halecki Prize is given annually by the Polish American Historical Association. This Prize recognizes an important book or monograph on the Polish experience in the United States and commemorates Oskar Halecki (1891-1973), a Polish historian, writer, and social and Catholic activist. Dr. Halecki was a graduate of Jagiellonian University (1914), who also studied in Vienna and taught at Jagiellonian University, Warsaw University, Fordham University and Columbia University. He was a member of Polska Akademia Umiejetnosci and a co-founder of PIASA in 1942 (he also served as its Executive Director and President). As a historian, Halecki was an expert on medieval history of Poland and Lithuania, and history of Byzantine Empire, author of Borderlands of Western Civilization: A History of East Central Europe, Jadwiga of Anjou and the Rise of East Central Europe (with Thaddeus Gromada), and The History of Poland. He received honorary doctorates from: the University of Lyon, University of Montreal, De Paul University and Fordham University.
LIST OF OSKAR HALECKI PRIZE WINNERS
2023: EWA BARCZYK
Footprints of Polonia: Polish Historical Sites Across North America, edited by Ewa Barczyk. New York, NY: Hippocrene Books, 2022. A citation by Wisława Szymborska opens Footprints of Polonia: "You can find the entire cosmos lurking in the least remarkable objects." Offering a survey of the Polish diaspora across North America and the Caribbean, Footprints of Polonia helps us to look anew at the churches, cemeteries, and statues that compose the Polonian built environment. Assembled in a remarkably illustrated volume, however, the "least remarkable" buildings and monuments are no longer individual sights, but transformed into a constellation that reveals broader patterns. Far from familiar, Footprints demonstrates how little we know about the Polish built environment and is a call for its study and preservation, especially as Polish architectural heritage in Rust Belt cities faces increasing threats of demolition. Opening new possibilities for public history and comparative study, Footprints is an essential starting point for any new work on the built environment of the Slavic diaspora.
2022: WILLIAM HAL GORBY
William Hal Gorby, Wheeling’s Polonia: Reconstructing Polish Community in a West Virginia Steel Town (Morgantown, West Virginia University Press, 2020) is very insightful with attention given to a smaller Polonia community which is usually not the topic of research. To quote from Matthew Stefanski’s review of Gorby’s book in the December 2020 Pol-Am Journal, Gorby seeks to reframe smaller urban communities as equally important to understanding the Polish emigre experience. “Given that most Americans did not live in cities over several hundred thousand people,” he argues, “turning our attention to smaller urban locals dramatically alters our understanding of the lived experiences of working-class immigrants.” With this guiding aim, Hal Gorby takes readers on a fascinating journey through nearly 50 years of rich Polonia history in Wheeling, West Virginia. Through in-depth research conducted over the course of a decade, Hal Gorby presents a comprehensive picture of a Polish community in Wheeling as it established itself, overcame many obstacles, and prospered. While Wheeling has some unique characteristics, being that it was a mostly urban, industrial, Catholic community in a state that was otherwise not; its Polish history, as Hal Gorby has shown, is absorbing, relatable, and no less worthy of documenting than that of larger metropolises. It is a well- researched, scholarly volume with extensive bibliography and notes yet very readable for anyone interested in the “ordinary” people who make up a Polish community.
2021: ANNA FRAJLICH
Anna Frajlich, The Ghost of Shakespeare: collected essays (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2020. [Series: Polish Studies]) The Ghost of Shakespeare takes its name from Frajlich's essay on Nobel Prize laureate Wisława Szymborska and highlights how Shakespeare weaves through many exiled Polish writers. She considers the work of major Polish writers of the twentieth century, including Zbigniew Herbert, Czesław Milosz, Bruno Schulz, and Józef Wittlin who were all resisters. The book concludes with autobiographical essays that describe her parents' dramatic flight from Poland at the outbreak of the war, her own exile from Poland in 1969, settling in New York City, and building her career as a scholar and leading poet of her generation. This volume of essays results from her lifelong role as the guardian of and contributor to Polish literary life in exile including Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian authors. Among Frajlich’s long list of distinctions the Susanne Lotarski Distinguished Achievement Award, given by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences “for her many contributions to Polish culture in poetry, prose, and literary studies extending over several decades.”
2020: DR. DOMINIC PACYGA
Dominic Pacyga’s American Warsaw: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Polish Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2019). The book is a masterful example of how the highest academic research standards can be implemented to produce a captivating and wide-ranging narrative for readers in academia and far beyond it. Pacyga’s American Warsaw is a must-read for anyone interested in migration, evolution of ethnic communities, process of acculturation in the United States, and the history of Chicago. The book “chronicles more than a century of immigration, and later emigration back to Poland, showing how the community has continually redefined what it means to be Polish in Chicago. [Pacyga] takes us from the Civil War era until today, focusing on how three major waves of immigrants, refugees, and fortune seekers shaped and then redefined the Polonia. Pacyga also traces the movement of Polish immigrants from the peasantry to the middle class and from urban working-class districts dominated by major industries to suburbia. He documents Polish Chicago’s alignments and divisions: with other Chicago ethnic groups; with the Catholic Church; with unions, politicians, and city hall; and even among its own members. And he explores the ever-shifting sense of Polskość, or ‘Polishness.’”
2019 - DR. GRAZYNA KOZACZKA
The 2019 Oskar Halecki Prize was presented on 4 January 2020 to Dr. Grażyna J. Kozaczka, for her book, Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction (Ohio University Press, 2019).
Kozaczka's book investigates the construction of Polish American womanhood in the fiction by Polish American authors of the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. It demonstrates how Polish American women writers have responded to the gender expectations of their communities, societies, and nations and how their heroines sought empowerment. One of the reviews calls it a unique scholarly work that "positions ethnic gender construction and performance at an intersection of social class, race, and sex."
2017 - Prof. Joanna Wojdon
The 2017 Halecki Prize was presented to Joanna Wojdon for White and Red Umbrella: The Polish American Congress in the Cold War Era 1944-1988 (Helena History Press, 2017). The award was received by the publisher, Katalin Kadar Lynn, Publisher of Helena History Press and faculty member at Eotvos Lorand University. The White and Red Umbrella recounts the goals and everyday activities of the Polish American Congress under the presidencies of Charles Rozmarek (1944-1968) and Aloysius Mazewski (1968-1988) who shaped the organization's image in the Cold War era. It deals with the issues of both the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of the PAC in representing Polish American interests, as a coordinator of various Polish American endeavors, as a lobbying organization, and as an institution providing cultural and social unity for Americans of Polish descent in America. It discusses internal and external factors that influenced the Congress and portrays the personalities of it’s activists and examines the PAC’s achievements and failures. Joanna Wojdon is an Associate Professor at the Institute of History, University of Wroclaw. The history of Polish Americans after World War II is one of her major research interests, alongside the history of education under communism. Her research in the Polish American archives was made possible thanks to a Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship(2003) and a Fulbright Senior Award (2014).
2016 - Prof. Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski
The 2016 Halecki Prize was awarded to Prof. Mieczysław B. Biskupski, for his book The Most Dangerous German Agent in America (NIU Press, 2015).
2015 - Anna Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann and Theodore Zawistowski, Letters from Readers in the Polish American Press, 1902-1969: A Corner for Everybody.
The 2014 Halecki Prize was presented to Anna Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann and Theodore Zawistowski, for Letters from Readers in the Polish American Press, 1902-1969: A Corner for Everybody. This is a unique collection of close to five hundred letters from Polish American readers, which were published in the Polish-language weekly Ameryka-Echo between 1902 and 1969. In these letters, Polish immigrants speak in their own words about their American experience, and vigorously debate religion, organization of their community, ethnic identity, American politics and society, and ties to the homeland. The translated letters are annotated and divided into thematic chapters with informative introductions. The Ameryka-Echo letters are a rich source of information on the history of Polish Americans, which can serve as primary sources for students and scholars. They also provide a new, fascinating, and lively look into the passions and experiences of individuals who created the larger American historical experience.
2014 - Anna Mazurkiewicz, ed., East Central Europe in Exile, vols. 1-2: Transatlantic Migrations, and Transatlantic Identities (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013).
This outstanding two-volume work, published under the general editorship and direction of Dr. Anna Mazurkiewicz of the University of Gdansk, takes up an extremely significant area of research in the broad field of Polish American studies, namely the experience of emigration and resettlement in a new homeland. The product of a recent academic conference held in Poland, these books include contributions by thirty-eight scholars from North America and Europe. Their contributions have a broadly comparative character, inasmuch as they include a number of presentations by scholars who examine aspects of both the Polish emigration and settlement experiences, along with those of other peoples from East Central Europe. There are also historical pieces as well as presentations having a more contemporary character. All in all, Dr. Mazurkiewicz's effort makes an inestimable contribution to scholarly research and knowledge in the important field of emigration studies - and with special attention to the experiences of peoples who are all too often overlooked in discussions of this subject.
2013 - Beth Holmgren, Starring Madame Modjeska: On Tour in Poland and America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012). https://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=782958
Review by Maja Trochimczyk in the Polish American Studies (spring 2013) opens with:"this handsomely produced volume about Poland's legendary actress is a must for every library and every Polonian home." Kazimierz Braun who had authored a play devoted to Modjeska wrote: "this is an excellent and meticulously rendered book" (Modern Drama 56/2, 2013). Upon examination of the review copy provided by the publisher, the Awards Committee found the above-mentioned reviews very well grounded. In our opinion, this book deserves the Halecki Award for its merits and also bears the potential of promoting the story of Helena Modrzejewska (Modjeska) among Polish-Americans as well as Polish and Polish-American heritage among the larger, non-ethnic audiences in the U.S. Beth Holmgren is the Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies and Slavic and Eurasian Studies Department Chair at Duke University.
2012 - Brian McCook, The Borders of Integration: Polish Migrants in Germany and the United States, 1870-1924 . (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012). https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/The+Borders+of+Integration
2011 - James S. Pula, ed., The Polish American Encyclopedia (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011). https://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-3308-7
2010 - M. B. B. Biskupski, Hollywood's War With Poland, 1939-1945 (Knoxville: University of Kentucky Press, 2010). https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=2324#.UvYUTLS0Lcw
And
Danusha V. Goska, Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010) https://www.academicstudiespress.com/SimpleSearch.aspx?query=bieganski
2009 - Alex Storozynski, The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2009). https://us.macmillan.com/thepeasantprince/AlexStorozynski
2008 - Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski and Antony Polonsky. Polish-Jewish Relations in North America (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization; 2007).
When Poles and Jews emigrated to North America, the relationship between them developed in new ways. This volume 19 of the Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry series looks at various aspects of that relationship, past and present. An edited anthology, key topics include Polish and Jewish relations from the early to mid 20th century; literary and journalistic representations; institutional contacts; attitudes to the Holocaust; the debate over Jedwabne; physical violence and initiatives for mutual understanding. Substantial space is also given, in 'New Views', to recent research in other areas of Polish-Jewish studies.
2007 - William J. Galush. Dr. Galush is Professor Emeritus in History at Loyola University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous scholarly works and articles related to Polish-American history. His recent work, For More than Bread: Community and Identity in American Polonia, 1880-1940 (Boulder: 2006) provides a rich, cultural history of the Polish American community and its integration into American society, comparatively exploring changing identities of immigrants and their second-generation children.
2006 - John Radzilowski, Poles in Minnesota (Minneapolis: 2005). Dr. Radzilowski is Associate Professor of History at the University of Alaska, a senior fellow at the Piast Institute, Detroit, and president of the Polish American Cultural Institute of Minnesota. He is as well a two-time winner of the PAHA Swastek Prize. Poles in Minnesota is honored as a highly readable account of the Polish Americans who created and sustained community institutions in that state. Filled with intriguing details, the book shows how Polish Americans established their own cultural identity within Minnesota.
2005 - Mary Patrice Erdmans. The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had and the Choices They Made (Athens, OH: 2004). Dr. Erdmans is Professor of Sociology at Central Connecticut State University, and current President of PAHA. The Grasinski Girls is a study of working class Americans of Polish descent, born in the 1920s and 1930s. The book has been praised by reviewers as "very original,refreshingly written,and remarkably [successful] on all levels. Professor Erdmans is a two time winner of the Halecki Prize, having been honored for her Opposite Poles in 1998.
2004 - Anna Jaroszynska- Kirchmann. The Exile Mission: The Polish Political Diaspora and Polish Americans, 1939-1956 (Athens, OH: 2004). Dr. Jaroszynska-Kirchmann monograph takes on several large issues: the relationship between an established ethnic community and new arrivals, debates over the distinction between economic immigrant and political refugee, the evolving relationship between an ethnic community and the politics of the homeland, and the continual re-construction of ethnic identity with new waves of immigration. She crafts a readable master narrative that draws on memoirs, ethnic organization records, government documents and interviews. She puts these sources into a framework drawn from wide- ranging research into secondary sources from several disciplines including sociology, diplomatic history and international law. Dr. Jaroszynska-Kirchmann clarifies the spectrum of ideological positions in post-World War II American Polonia and shows the impact of an "exile mission," first articulated in Europe, on the interaction between the exiles and the established Polish American community.
2003 - Karen Majewski. Traitor and True Poles: Narrating a Polish American Identity, 1880-1939. (Athens, OH: 2003). Dr. Majewski's work is the first extended look at Polish-language fiction written by turn-of-the-century immigrants. Addressing a blind spot in our understanding of immigrant and ethnic identity and culture, Traitors and True Poles challenges perceptions of a silent and passive Polish immigration. Polish-American immigrant writers used their work to define and consolidate an essentially transnational ethnic identity that was both tied to Poland and independent of it. In Traitors and True Poles, Dr. Majewski illustrates how immigrants manipulated often difficult economic, social, and political realities to provide a place for and a sense of themselves. What emerges is a fuller picture of American literature, one vital to the creation of an ethnic consciousness. Madeline Levine of UNC wrote in her review of the book: "She shows how the detective stories, comic narratives, romantic tale, and realist novels not only entertained a not-yet-assimilated and not very well-educated readership but also expressed a range of contented definitions of Polishness." The book was chosen as one of Choice's top academic books of 2003. Dr. Majewski is Special Collections Librarian for the Polish Collection at the Orchard Lake Schools, in Orchard Lake, Michigan.
2002 - Two Awards.
Joseph Bigott, From Cottage to Bungalow: Houses and the Working Class in Metropolitan Chicago,1869-1929 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3643264.html
AND
Stephen Leahy, Clement Zablocki, Milwaukee's Most Politician: A Study of Local Politics and Congressional Foreign Policy (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002). https://mel lenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=4658&pc=9
2001 -No award
2000 - Deborah Anders Silverman, Polish-American Folklore (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000). https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/47ycm4st9780252025693. html
1999 - Thomas S. Gladsky and Rita Holmes Gladsky, eds., Something of My Very Own to Say: American Women Writers of Polish Descent (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs; [New York]: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1997). https://www.amazon.com/Something-My-Very-Own-Say/dp/088033391X AND Joseph Wieczerzak, Bishop Francis Hodur: Biographical Essays (Boulder: East European Monographs; [New York]: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1998). www.amazon.com/Bishop-Francis-Hodur-Biographical- monographs/dp/0944497128/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
1998 - Mary Patrice Erdmans, Opposite Poles: Immigrants and Ethnics in Polish Chicago, 1976-1990 (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01735-X.html
1997 - Suzanne Strempek Shea, Hoopi Shoopi Donna (New York: Pocket Books, 1996). https://www.amazon.com/Hoopi-Shoopi-Donna-Suzanne- Strempek/dp/0671535455
1996 -No award
1995 - James S. Pula, Polish Americans: An Ethnic Community (New York: Twayne Publishers; London: Prentice Hall International, 1995). https://www.amazon.com/Polish-Americans-Community-Immigrant-Heritage/dp/0805784381
1994 - Anthony Bukoski, Children of Strangers: Stories (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993). https://www.amazon.com/Children-Strangers-Stories-Anthony-Bukoski/dp/0870743643
1993 - Thomas Gladsky, Princes, Peasants, and Other Polish Selves: Ethnicity in American Literature (Amherst, Mass. : University of Massachusetts Press, 1992).https://www.amazon.com/Princes-Peasants-Other-Polish-Selves/dp/0870237756
1992 - Dominic Pacyga, Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago: Workers on the South Side, 1880-1922 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991). https://www.amazon.com/Polish-Immigrants-Industrial-Chicago-1880-1922/dp/0226644243
1991: James S. Pula and Eugene E. Dziedzic, United We Stand: The Role of Polish Workers in the New Mills Textile Strikes , 1912 and 1916 (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs ; New York : Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1990). https://www.amazon.com/United-We-Stand-James-Pula/dp/0880331836
1990 - Barbara Stern Burstin, After the Holocaust: The Migration of Polish Jews and Christians to Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989). https://www.amazon.com/After-Holocaust-Migration-Christians-Pittsburgh/dp/0822936038
1989 - Sister Ann Marie Knawa, O.S.F., As God Shall Ordain: A History of the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago, 1894-1987 (Lemont, Ill. : Franciscan Sisters of Chicago, 1989).https://www.amazon.com/Ordain-History-Franciscan-Sisters-Chicago/dp/B000WSBE0U
1988 - Josephine Wtulich, Marcin Kula, Witold Kula, and Nina Assorodobraj-Kula, Writing Home: Immigrants in Brazil and the United States, 1890-1891 (Boulder: East European Monographs; New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1986). https://www.amazon.co.uk/Writing-Home-Immigrants-1890-1891-Monographs/dp/0880331070
1987 - John Bukowczyk, And My Children Did Not Know Me: A History of the Polish- Americans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). https://www.amazon.com/And-Children-Did-Know-Polish-Americans/dp/0253203910 AND Eugene Obidinski and Helen Stankiewicz, Polish Folkways in America: Community and Family (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987). https://www.amazon.co.uk/Polish-Folkways-America-Community-Studies/dp/0819158828
1986 - Frank Renkiewicz, For God, Country, and Polonia: One Hundred Years of the Orchard Lake Schools (Orchard Lake, Mich.: Center for Polish Studies and Culture, Orchard Lake Schools, 1985). https://www.amazon.com/For-God-Country-Polonia-Hundred/dp/0961556404
1985 - Donald Pienkos, PNA: A Centennial History of thePolish National Alliance of the United States of North America (Boulder: East European Monographs, New York: Distr. By Columbia Univ. Press, 1984). https://www.amazon.com/Centennial-History-National-Alliance-America/dp/0880330600
1984 - John Bodnar, Roger Simon, and Michael Weber, Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians and Poles in Pittsburgh,1900-1960 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1982). https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Their-Own-Pittsburgh-1900-1960/dp/0252010639
1983 - Joseph Parot, Polish Catholics in Chicago, 1850-1920: A Religious History (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1981). https://www.amazon.com/Polish-Catholics-Chicago-1850-1920-Religious/dp/0875805272
1982: Lawrence Orton, Polish Detroit and the Kolasinski Affair (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1981). https://www.amazon.com/Polish-Detroit-Kolasinski-Affair-Lawrence/dp/0814316719
1981: Anthony Kuzniewski, Faith and Fatherland: The Polish Church War in Wisconsin, 1896-1918 (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1980). https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Fatherland-Wisconsin-1896-1918-Catholicism/dp/0268009481