James Krapfl

James Krapfl is a historian of political culture. He is the author of a revisionist history of the central European revolutions of 1989, which systematically investigates the words and deeds of the millions of citizens who mobilized to build “a new society.” Not initially opposed to “socialism,” citizens in their local milieux strove to create a humane, fair, and non-violent society that would mix direct with representative democracy in both political and economic spheres; the neoliberal Europe that ultimately ensued was thus not a direct consequence of the revolutions, but of a refined counter-revolution in the early 1990s. Revolution with a Human Face won the George Blazyca Prize for best book in East European studies, as well as the Czechoslovak Studies Association book prize. In subsequent work Prof. Krapfl has foreshadowed and psychoanalyzed populist reactions to the “democratic deficit” that succeeded civic engagement in 1989, and he has chronicled grassroots initiatives to reinvigorate democracy.

While continuing to write and lecture on the history of Europe since 1989, Prof. Krapfl is preparing a new book on the political cultures forged in the collective effervescence of 1968. He focuses on popular experiences of the late 1960s in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland, comparing them with contemporaneous struggles over the meaning of democracy across the Iron Curtain. Research for this project has been supported by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and by Czech, German, and Slovak funding bodies. Prof. Krapfl is also part of an interdisciplinary team based at Charles University in Prague, working to develop a global historical anthropology of revolution.

In his teaching, Prof. Krapfl emphasizes creative problem-solving and the relevance of history to navigating the present. He has been awarded the H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Arts Undergraduate Society’s Excellence in Teaching Award. He is the editor of Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue canadienne des slavistes, and previously he co-edited a special issue of East European Politics & Societies and Cultures to mark the fortieth anniversary of Václav Havel’s landmark essay The Power of the Powerless. For his work on this collection, Prof. Krapfl received the Michael Henry Heim Prize in collegial translation. Prof. Krapfl sits on the executive board of the Canadian Association of Slavists and has previously served on the board of directors of the Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. He has co-organized the Montreal Central European Studies Workshop, and he has been a visiting fellow at universities and research institutes in Bratislava, Jena, Olomouc, and Prague.