About

Pronouns: he/him/his

Jakub Kazecki joined Bates College as an Assistant Professor of German in 2012. Prior to his current position at Bates, Professor Kazecki held academic appointments teaching German language and culture at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut (2008-2012) and at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (2006-2008). He also served as a Sessional Lecturer in German at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (2004-2006).

Prof. Kazecki earned his Ph.D. in Germanic Studies from the Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 2007. Before completing his Ph.D., he studied at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and at Adam-Mickiewicz-University in Poznań, Poland.

Since Fall 2023, he has been serving as the chair of German and Russian Studies.

Prof. Kazecki’s scholarly career is dedicated to German Studies, European Studies, Film Studies, and Border Studies, concentrating on 20th-century German literature, the interplay of humor and violence in visual media, and the changing portrayal of German-Polish relations in literature and film. His foundational research focused on World War I military literature and the intersection of humor with serious literary genres, culminating in his monograph, Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives (2012). Extending his inquiry into humor, Prof. Kazecki co-edited the collections Border Visions: Identity and Diaspora in Film (2013, with Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Cynthia J. Miller) and Heroism and Gender in War Films (2014, with Karen A. Ritzenhoff).

His current research area examines images of German-Polish relationships through the lens of Border Studies. He published several articles utilizing a postcolonial lens to analyze the Orientalist gaze applied to Poland in German cinema and television after 1989. His main research project is the the upcoming monograph, Framing Neighbors: Poland in German Cinema after 1989, which analyzes the depictions of Poland in German film, documenting the evolution from colonially coded spaces to sites of creative hybridity.

Selected Publications:

“From Polski Crash to Meine Polnische Jungfrau: Orientalizing Poland in the German Cinema of the 1990s.” Colloquia Germanica 57, no. 4 (December 2024): 415–36. https://doi.org/10.24053/CG-2024-0020.

“Are the Polish Housekeepers ‘Willig Und Billig’? The Image of Polish Migrant Women Workers in German TV Productions of the 2010s.” Herder-Institut and Copernico: History and Cultural Heritage in Eastern Europe, 2024. https://www.copernico.eu/en/link/66bb429ec654c8.63337586.

“Through an Orientalist Lens: Colonial Renderings of Poland in German Cinema after 1989.” In Edinburgh German Yearbook 15: Tracing German Visions of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, edited by Jenny Watson, Michel Mallet, and Hanna Schumacher, 133–54. Boydell & Brewer, 2022. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j04szc.8.

“‘Ich bin ein Betweener’: The Concept of the Existential Migrant in Steffen Möller’s Travel Narratives about Poland.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 61, no. 1 (January 2019): 81–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/00085006.2018.1557452.

“The Mimicry of The Lizard Man: Dariusz Muszer’s Narratives of Migration in the (Post-)Colonial Context.” In Postcolonial Slavic Literatures After Communism, edited by Klavdia Smola and Dirk Uffelmann, 433-451. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016.

“War Memoir as Entertainment: Walter Bloem’s Vormarsch (1916).” In Humor, Entertainment, and Popular Culture during World War I, edited by Clémentine Tholas-Disset and Karen A. Ritzenhoff. 91-105. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

“The Functions of Humor and Laughter in Narrating Trauma in German Literature of the First World War.” In The Unspeakable: Narratives of Trauma, edited by Magda Stroinska, Vikki Cecchetto, and Kate Szymanski. 43-55. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and New York: Peter Lang, 2014.

Courses Taught at Bates College:

GER 101, Introduction to German Language and Culture I
GER 102, Introduction to German Language and Culture II
GER 202, Intermediate German Language and Culture II
GER 233, Advanced German Language and Culture I
GER 234, Advanced German Language and Culture II / Long Read: Advanced German Language and Culture
GER 251, The Age of Revolution: The German Enlightenment, Classicism, and Romantic Rebellion, 1750-1830
GER 252, Tracing the Autobiographical: Personal Narratives in the 20th-Century German Literature
GER 253, Contemporary German Cultures
GER 262, The Split Screen: Reconstructing National Identities in West and East German Cinema
GER 264, World War One in German Culture
GER 341, Landscapes and Cityscapes in German Media
GER 350, Margins and Migrations
GER s26, The Split Screen: Reconstructing National Identities in West and East German Cinema
GR/EU s21, Weimar and Berlin: German Culture in European Context
EU/GR 220, Remembering War: The Great War, Memory, and Remembrance in Europe
EU/GR 254, Berlin and Vienna, 1900–1914
BSAG 009, Mapping the City: The Urban Landscape as Text (Fall Semester Abroad in Berlin Program)
FYS 423, Humor and Laughter in Literature and Visual Media
THEA/EUS s33, Central European Theater and Film (co-taught with Katalin Vecsey)