Book Project

Nationalism · Antisemitism · chauvinism

My first book project, Patrolling the Binary, Policing the Nation: Sexism, Antisemitism, and the Polish Right on the Eve of the Holocaust, analyzes the ways in which Polish fears of geopolitical collapse intersected with racial antisemitism to render women and Jews politically (and physically) vulnerable in the years leading up to the Nazi invasion. Analyzing the antisemitic press, political leaflets, law codes, and police records, my book shows how gender politics worked to structure pre-war Polish antisemitism. I argue that a toxic amalgam of misogyny and racism intertwined to cast Jews and women as politically suspicious. This suspicion contributed to a political climate in which Jews and women were rendered less worthy of Polish protection. In so doing, my work exposes the endogenous forces that helped contribute to the civilian death rates within Polish territory during World War II. Support has come from the Fulbright Commission, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the Crown Center in Jewish Studies (Northwestern University), the Buffet Institute for Global Studies (Northwestern University), the Foreign Language and Area Studies Program (FLAS), the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the Kościuszko Foundation. I have presented the main arguments of my research at numerous conferences, including ASEEES and the AHA, and I am preparing the manuscript for submission to the University of Pittsburgh Press.