President

PRESIDENT OF THE POLISH AMERICAN
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Dr. Anna Muller, 
PAHA President, 2019-2020

Anna Muller holds an M.A. from the University of Gdańsk, Poland and a Ph.D. from Indiana University. She is an Assistant Professor and the Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professor in Polish/Polish American/Eastern European Studies in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. From 2010 to 2012, she worked as a curator for the Museum of the Second War in Gdańsk, Poland, where she co-curated exhibitions on the Holocaust, concentration camps, forced labor, and eugenics. In 2012, she coordinated an exhibit on contemporary masculinities and femininities in Eastern Europe, titled she, he, me. The exhibit was on display at the Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville (2012), Florida and Oloman Café in Hamtramck (2017). In 2015, thanks to grants from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Research and Sponsored Programs at UMD, she collaborated with photographer Tomasz Zerek and the Emigration Museum in Gdynia on an oral history project in Hamtramck, Michigan, titled the People of Hamtramck, which included a series of interviews with Hamtramck Polonia. The project resulted in two exhibitions -- one in Hamtramck and one in Gdynia, Poland. The Oral Interviews recorded for that project can be found here: http://archiwumemigranta.pl/pl/kolekcje/oblicza_polonii

She is the author of If the Walls Could Speak. Inside a Women’s Prison in Communist Poland (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her most recent articles include: “A More Manly Man.... Masculinities, Body, and Fatherhood in the 1980s Polish Political Prisoners’ Correspondence”. It was published in with the Palgrave Macmillan in a volume: Gender in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe and the USSR, ed. Catherine Baker. She has two books under contract: My Body and My Cell – A collection of oral history interviews with female political prisoners from Eastern Europe (in Polish) (Lupa Obscura, Warsaw) and the Biography of Tonia Lechtman (Ohio University Press).

Her teaching interests include courses on Polish history, Central Europe, and the history of European women. She is also involved in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, in which a college class is taught in a correctional facility with the participation of prisoners (inside students) and outside students. Every other year, she organizes a four-week study abroad program to Poland, which include visits to Kraków, Zakopane, Lublin, Łódz, Warsaw, and Gdańsk. During the tour she taught a class titled: Memory and Oblivion in Polish History.

Anna Mazurkiewicz, Ph.D. 

University of Gdansk, Past President, 2017-2018

Dr. Anna Mazurkiewicz works at the Faculty of History at the University of Gdańsk where from she graduated summa cum laude in 1999, and where she defended her Doctoral Dissertation in 2006. She also studied at the California State University, Fresno (1997-1998), was a APRF Fellow at the Notre Dame University (2002-2003), and a Kosciuszko Foundation Fellow at the IHRC at the University of Minnesota (2007-2008), Visegrad Fellow at the Central European University, Open Society Archives in Budapest (2010). She taught at State University of New York (Buffalo, 2012-2013) and gave guest lectures at the University of Primorska, Koper (Slovenia). Her scholarly interests include: the Cold War; the United States after World War II; U.S.-Polish diplomatic relations; media system in the United States; U.S. policy towards the countries of East Central Europe; political activity of refugees from East Central Europe in the United States after World War II; political emigration from East Central Europe in 1945-1989.

She has published two books related to the American response to elections in Poland (1947,1989): Dyplomacja Stanów Zjednoczonych wobec wyborów w Polsce w latach 1947 i 1989, Neriton, Warszawa 2007; Prasa amerykańska wobec wyborów w Polsce w latach 1947 i 1989, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, Gdańsk 2009. She edited a two-volume publication: East Central Europe in Exile, vol. 1: Transatlantic Migrations and vol. 2: Transatlantic Identities (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013) which won the Oskar Halecki Prize bestowed by the Polish American Historical Association (2015). The most recent volume edited by her has just been printed as part of the series: Od exsilli do exile. Migracje przymusowe w perspektywie historycznej, Studia Historica Gedanensia, Vol.5 (Gdańsk: University of Gdańsk Press, 2014). Member of a number of Polish and foreign scholarly associations, Mazurkiewicz is the First Vice-President of the Polish American Historical Association. She is the recipient of a few awards including: The National Centre for Culture’s award for best doctoral dissertation in history (2007) and Swastek Award for best article printed in the scholarly journal Polish American Studies in 2012, Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongowiusz University of Gdańsk Distinction for Excellence in Teaching (2010), and the Medal of the Commission of National Education (2014). Since 2006 she has been working on the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN) in the context of American foreign policy during the Cold War.

Dr. Grażyna Kozaczka
English, Cazenovia College, Cazenovia, NY
Past President, 2015-2016

Grazyna J. Kozaczka received her Ph.D. in American Literature from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. She is a Professor of English at Cazenovia College and the director of the All-College Honors Program. Her book–length publications include William Dean Howells and John Cheever: Their Views on the Failing of the American Dream (Universitas, Krakow, Poland) and Old World Stitchery (Chilton Book Co. Radnor, PA). Among her research interests are American ethnic literature, women’s literature, literature of the Holocaust as well as traditional Polish folk dress and adornment. She has published scholarly essays as well as short fiction. 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PAST PAHA PRESIDENTS

Note: even-numbered year terms end in January of the following odd-numbered year (viz., 1998-2000, ends in January 2001).

Miecislaus Haiman (1942-49); Honorary President (1949)
Rev. Joseph Swastek (1949-51)
A.J. Sokolnicki (1952)
Rev. Joseph Swastek (1953)
Rev. Valerius Jasinski (1954)
Sr. Mary Virginette, C.S.S.F. (1955)
Rev. Francis Domanski, SJ (1956)
Rev. M.J. Madaj (1957)
Fr. Ladislaus J. Siekaniec, OFM (1958-59)
Sr. Mary Catherine, CR (1960)
Rev. Constantine Klukowski, O.F.M. (1961-62)
Frank B. Roman (1963)
Eugene Kusielewicz (1964-65)
Rev. Zdzislaw Peszkowski (1966)
Sigmund H. Uminski (1967)
Rev. Menceslaus J. Madaj (1968-69)
Joseph Wieczerzak (1970)
Bernadine Pietraszek (1971)
Rev. Jacek Przygoda (1972)
Bernadine Pietraszek (1973)
George J. Lerski (1974)
Rev. M.J. Madaj (1975)
Frank A. Renkiewicz (1976)
Sr. Ellen Marie Kuznicki, CSSF (1977)
Joseph W. Wieczerzak (1978)
Anthony F. Turhollow (1979)
Angela Pienkos (1980)
James S. Pula (1981)
Thomas J. Napierkowski (1982)
Rev. Anthony J. Kuzniewski, S.J. (1983)
Thaddeus V. Gromada (1984)
Thaddeus Radzialowski (1985)
Stanislaus Blejwas (1986)
Rev. Leonard F. Chrobot (1987-1988)
M. B. Biskupski (1988-1990)
John J. Bukowczyk (1990-1992)
Thomas J. Napierkowski (1992-1994)
Thaddeus V. Gromada (1994-1996)
William Galush (1996-1998)
Thomas Gladsky (1998-2000)
Stanislaus Blejwas (2000-2001)
Donald Pienkos (2001-2002)
Mary Erdmans (2003-2006)
Anna Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann (2007-2008)
Brian McCook (2009-2010)
Thomas Napierkowski (2011-2012)
Neal Pease (2012-2013)
Thomas Napierkowski (2013-2014)
Grażyna Kozaczka (2015-2016)
Anna Mazurkiewicz (2017-2018)