About

Pronouns: he/him/his

Jakub Kazecki joined the faculty in German & Russian Studies in 2012 after teaching German language, literature and film courses at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, CT and McMaster University in Hamilton, ON.

Jakub’s research interests include 20th-century German literature (especially literature about the First World War), images of German-Polish relationships in literature, film and visual arts, and laughter and comedy in different media. He is the author of Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives (2012) and the co-editor of the books Heroism and Gender in Film (2014, together with Karen A. Ritzenhoff) and Border Visions: Borderlands in Film and Literature (2013, together with Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Cynthia Miller).

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
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