Mikolaj Kunicki
Assistant Professor
Field
Modern Europe
Profile
Mikolaj Kunicki joined the department of history at Notre Dame in 2006. He earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University (2004). He also holds M.A. degrees from the University of London (1996), Central European University in Budapest (1994), and Warsaw University (1993). He taught at Stanford University and UC Berkeley and was a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in 2005-2006.
Kunicki is a historian of twentieth century Poland and Eastern Europe. His work focuses primarily on the role of nationalism in Polish and Eastern European history and analyzes the complex entanglement of fascism, communism, and Catholicism. He is particularly interested in exploring nationalist-communist affinities as well as the ideological kinship between the radical right and the extreme left. By doing so, he reevaluates and challenges the way a history of communist Poland and Eastern Europe has been understood and presented. He is also interested in Eastern European film, and devoted especially to examining cinematic representations of the national past and the status of film vis-à-vis communist regimes.
Current Project
His current project is a comprehensive political biography of Boleslaw Piasecki (1915-1979), a Polish nationalist politician, who started his career as a fascist in the 1930s and ended it as a pro-communist Catholic activist in postwar Poland. It broader terms, the manuscript presents an example of the ideological affinity between Communism and nationalism.
Teaching Interests
At Notre Dame, Kunicki teaches undergraduate courses on 20th century Eastern Europe and modern Poland.
Recent Publications
“Zwischen Anpassung, Widerstand und Dialog. Die Beziehungen zwischen Kirche und Staat in kommunistischen Polen 1945-1989,” Transit-Europäische Revue, 31, 2006.
“The Polish Solidarity Movement.” Revolutionary Movements in World History. From 1750 to the Present, ABC-CLIO, 2006.
“The Red and the Brown: Bolesław Piasecki, the Polish Communists, and the anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, 1967-1968,” East European Politics and Societies (EEPS), Vol.19, No.2, 2005.
“Unwanted Collaborators: Leon Kozłowski, Władysław Studnicki, and the Problem of Collaboration among the Polish Conservative Politicians in World War II,” European Review of History – Revue européenne d’Histoire, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001.
Contact
Office: 414 Decio Faculty Hall
Phone: (574) 631-4560
Email: mikolaj.s.kunicki.1@nd.edu
Office Hours: M/W 3-4 pm (fall)