EMIGRATION, EXILE, AND RETURN: CONDUCTING ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN POLAND
EMIGRATION, EXILE, AND RETURN: CONDUCTING ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN POLAND

Summary/Abstract: As a Polish American anthropologist, now based permanently at the University of Central Florida, I feel honored to be invited to contribute to the Special Issue of the distinguished “Lud” journal on its 100th Volume Anniversary. I welcome the oportunity to explain my interest in returning to Poland to conduct ethnographic fi eldwork in Kraków, Warsaw and Gdańsk, and my intellectual trajectory to pursue the challenging topic of the politics of gender and reproductive rights, so troubled and controversial since the fall of state socialism. Having grown up in a Roman Catholic family, I have experienced personal and intellectual transformations which ultimately fueled my interest in Polish gender politics and church-state relations. Thus, I believe that to properly contextualize my desire to conduct research in Poland, this reflexive essay has to begin with my accidental exile when I came to Florida in late November 1981 as a tennis player on the girls’ national team, and was “trapped” in the United States. Indeed, I never intended to leave Poland.

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