Katarzyna Nowak wins BASEES 2020 Postgraduate prize

We are delighted to announce that Katarzyna Nowak has won the BASEES Postgraduate prize for 2020. The field was very strong this year and our two judges, Dr. Kelly Hignett and Dr. Andrea Gullota, provide two honourable mentions as well as the below citation for the winning article.

Katarzyna Nowak, ‘A Gloomy Carnival of Freedom. Sex, Gender and Emotions Among Polish Displaced Persons in the Aftermath of World War II’, Aspasia, 13 (2019), pp.113-134. 

In this meticulously researched and written article, Katarzyna Nowak combines literary theory with detailed historical analysis, using Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque transgression as a lens to analyse the sexual experiences and intimate relations of Polish Displaced Persons in Allied camps between 1945-1951. This original approach, combined with extensive archival research and close textual analysis of an extremely impressive range of source materials, allows Nowak to describe the ‘outburst of bodily experiences’ within the camps following the euphoria of liberation, during a liminal period when sexual encounters provided a release from the corporeal oppression of the war and intimate relationships went largely untouched by traditional social and moral norms, before analysing subsequent attempts by Polish community leaders to facilitate the resumption of normalcy, by regulating intimate relationships, sexual activity and policing bodily autonomy in their efforts to the restore more traditional religious values, gender norms and social conventions within the confines of camp space. In addition to shedding new light on the experiences and attitudes of Polish DPs, Nowak’s research pushes the boundaries beyond traditional historical analysis, enabling her to focalise several important aspects of emasculation, war trauma and the challenges of rebuilding a community in exile. 

 In recognition of the very high standard of nominations for the BASEES Postgraduate prize this year, the judges would also like to formally make honourable mention of two other nominated articles: 

Frances Saddington, ‘Modelling the Soviet Kindergarten in the Early Soviet Picture Book’ History: The Journal of the Historical Association, 104, 361 (July 2019), pp.425-458

and

Marta Kotwas’s contribution to the article ‘Symbolic Thickening of Public Culture and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism in Poland’ (co-authored with Jan Kubik), East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, 33,2 (May 2019), pp.435-471.