Geneviève Zubrzycki is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Polish Studies at the University of Michigan.  She studies national identity and religion, collective memory and the politics of commemorations, and the place of religious symbols in the public sphere. Her book, The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland (University of Chicago Press, 2006) received the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Book Award from the Sociology of Religion section, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies’ Orbis Best Book Prize, and the Polish Studies Association’s Best Book Award. It is currently being translated into Polish (Krakow: Nomos, 2013).  Her most recent article, “History and the National Sensorium: Making Sense of Polish Mythology” (Qualitative Sociology, 2011), won the ASA’s Clifford Geertz Award for Best Article in the Sociology of Culture.

Zubrzycki is currently completing a book on religion and nationalism in Quebec.  She pays specific attention to the secularization of national identity during the 1960s’ Quiet Revolution but extends her analysis to recent debates on secularism and immigration during the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. She also pursues her work on religion and symbolic boundary-making in Poland, and is now at work on a new monograph on the current renaissance of Jewish communities in Poland and non-Jewish Poles’ interest in all things Jewish.