Geneviève Zubrzycki

Geneviève Zubrzycki is a comparative-historical and cultural sociologist who studies nationalism and religion; collective memory and national mythology; and aesthetics and politics.

Her first book, the award-winning The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland  (Chicago 2006) analyzed the reconfiguration of the relationship between Polishness and Catholicism after the fall of communism. She did so by examining Poles' and Jews' conflicting memories of World War II, and the international conflict over the presence of Christian symbols at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was translated into Polish in 2014 (Nomos).

In her second book, Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion and Secularism in Quebec (Chicago 2016), Zubrzycki analyzed the discursive, ritual and visual genesis of a Catholic French-Canadian ethnic identity in the 19th century, and its transformation into a secular Québécois national identity in the second half of the 20th century. She extended her analysis to the present, investigating the role of Québécois nationalism in recent debates over immigration, the place of religious symbols in the public sphere, and the politics of cultural heritage—shedding light on similar debates elsewhere in the world. The book received multiple national and international awards and was translated into French and Polish.

Zubrzycki pursued her analysis of religion’s role in symbolic boundary-making in a third monograph,  Resurrecting the Jew: Nationalism, Philosemitism and Poland's Jewish Revival (Princeton 2022). Primarily based on participant observation and interviews, the book analyzes the post-1989 revival of Jewish communities in Poland and non-Jewish Poles’ interest in all things Jewish. It was awarded the prestigious Wayne S. Vunich Prize from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, awarded for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences published in English in the United States in the previous calendar year. The book also received the Rachel Feldhay Brenner Book Award from the Polish institute of Arts and Sciences of America. 

In addition to these three monographs, Zubrzycki has extended her theorizing on the significance of visual culture and materiality in her edited volume National Matters: Materiality, Culture and Nationalism (Stanford University Press, 2017) and is currently at work on a new book about the semiotics and aesthetics of nationalism.

Awards

Her books and articles received prizes from the American Sociological Association’s sections on Sociology of Culture, Political Sociology, Sociology of Religion, and Collective Behavior and Social Movements; the International Society for the Sociology of Religion; the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion; the Canadian Sociological Association; the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies; the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, and the Polish Studies Association. 

In 2021, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her "prior achievements and exceptional promise" and the Bronislaw Malinowski Prize in the Social Sciences from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America for her "widely-recognized research contributions to the social sciences, particularly as they relate to Poland and East-Central Europe."

Administration / Leadership Positions

Professor Zubrzycki is the Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia and the Copernicus Center in Polish Studies at the University of Michigan.

She was elected Chair of the American Sociological Association's Culture Section (2014-16) and to the Councils of the ASA sections on the Sociology of Religion (2014-17) and Political Sociology (2019-21). She served as Secretary-Treasurer of the ASA's Comparative-Historical Section (2006-09). She has also chaired or served on the committees of several ASA book award and best article committees, as well as on nominations committees for the ASA sections on Global and Transnational Sociology (2019) and Political Sociology (2021). She was a member of the Association for the Sociology of Religion's Council  (2019-22), and served on Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies' Wayne Vucinich Book Award (2018-19).

From 2016 to 2024, Zubrzycki co-edited the Cambridge University Press Journal Comparative Studies in Society and History (CSSH), serves on the editorial committees of several journals, and has held visiting appointment at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and SciencesPo (Paris)

Recent Articles (selection)

2026.       “Durkheim, Religion, and the Sociology of Nationalism,” in Marcel Fournier and Paul Carls (eds), The Elgar Companion to Émile Durkheim.

2025       “Religious Nationalism in the 21^st Century.” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review.

2023.      “The Social Context of De-assimilation and Its Challenges.” Contemporary Jewry, 43: 779-788

2022.     “Jan Gross’ Neighbors and Poland’s Narrative Shock.” The Jewish Quarterly Review, 112:2, 234-238.

2021      “Theodicy and Crisis: Explaining Variation in US Believers' Faith Respeonse to the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review. (With Kraig Beyerlein and David Nirenberg).

2020   “The Comparative Politics of Collective Memory.” Annual Review of Sociology, 46:175–94. (with Anna Woźny)

2020    “Quo Vadis, Polonia? On Religious Loyalty, Voice, and Exit.” Social Compass, 67:2.

2019     “National Culture, National Identity, and the Culture(s) of the Nation,” in Laura Grindstaff, Ming-cheng Lo and John R. Hall (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology, 2^nd edition, New York: Routledge, 506-514.

2017    “The Politics of Jewish Absence in Contemporary Poland,” Journal of Contemporary History, 52:2, 250-277.