Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities

Lenny A. Ureña Valerio is the associate director for program development at the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico. Her primary research and teaching interests include imperial/colonial studies, European migration to Latin America, Polish diaspora in Brazil, the history of medicine and public health, and historical methods and theories.

"Stands to revolutionize how scholars conceive of imperial Germany's eastern domains as well as German-Polish and German-Slavic relations. Of great interest to an interdisciplinary audience that includes specialists of Central Europe, Germany, Poland, migration, imperialism, race, the history of medicine, and African and Latin American studies. Ureña Valerio's approach and findings are remarkably original and important, and offer an excellent example of how Central European history, and even Polish history, can be written in a global approach and in the context of European colonialism." "Ureña Valerio's innovative work addresses what has been missing in recent works on the 'eastern turn' and 'colonial turn' in German studies: it integrates Polish responses to German colonial projects, both discursive and real. Another valuable contribution is her analysis of eugenics and racial hygiene discourses." "This highly interesting work brings together the insights of colonial and comparative studies. Ureña Valerio applies them to the Polish-German borderland, or 'Prussian Poland,' the subject of which has until now been dominated by traditional monographs seeking to claim the land as either rightfully German or rightfully Polish. Her approach is new and refreshing." "(Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities) is not only an exceptional addition to the discussion around identity formation and the making of Polishness, but also offers new insights on colonial comparative studies, and an invaluable addition to theories of eugenics and race science in Europe." (History: The Journal of the Historical Association)