prof. dr hab. Ewa Łuczak
Department of North American Cultures and Literatures
full professor
Room number: 3.239
Phone: +48 (22) 5531417
email: e.b.luczak@uw.edu.pl
Degrees
full professor 2024
Postdoctoral degree (habilitacja) University of Warsaw, 2011
Ph.D., University of Warsaw, 2000
Research interests and projects
Research Interests
Social Darwinism and eugenics in American literature and culture
Theories of race and their historical development
Medical humanities
American modernism: literature and film
Cosmopolitan studies
Twentieth-century African American literature, with a special focus on expatriate fiction
Humor studies, especially political satire in American literature and culture
Latino/a literature
Recent Publications
My recent publications include Pathologizing Black Bodies: The Legacy of Plantation Slavery (co-authored with Constante González Groba and Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis; Routledge, 2023); Mocking Eugenics: American Culture against Scientific Hatred (Routledge, 2021); and Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination (Palgrave, 2015).
I am currently working on a new book, Genius Men: Beyond the Biocultural Myth (under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing).
From 2021 to 2024, I served as President of the Polish Association for American Studies.
Selected publications
Books
Łuczak, Ewa Barbara, Constante Gonzales Groba, Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis (2023) Pathologizing Black Bodies: The Legacy of Plantation Slavery. Routledge.
Łuczak, Ewa Barbara (Ed) (2022). William Faulkner. WUW.
Luczak, Ewa Barbara (2021). Mocking Eugenics: American Culture against Scientific Hatred. New York: Routledge.
Luczak, E; Pochmara A.; Dayal S. (Eds) (2019). New Cosmopolitanisms, Race and Ethnicity: Cultural Perspectives. De Gruyter.
Luczak, Ewa Barbara. (2015). Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination: Heredity Rules in the Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ziarkowska-Ciechanowska, J. A. & Łuczak, E. (Eds.). (2015). Pisarze pochodzenia indiańskiego: Momaday, Silko, Erdrich, Alexie, Vizenor. WUW.
Łuczak, E. (Ed.). (2013). Toni Morrison. WUW.
Luczak, Ewa Barbara (2010). How Their Living in Europe Affected Five African American Authors: Towards a Theory of Expatriate Literature. Mellen Press.
Chapters
Łuczak, E. (2017). Czytając "obcego"; poszukiwanie kosmopolityzmu w Komu bije dzwon. In E. Łuczak (Ed.). Ernest Hemingway. (pp. 173-194). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Łuczak, E. (2017). Czyja Ameryka? Wiosenne potoki jako krytyka dyskursu eugenicznego. In E. Łuczak (Ed.). Ernest Hemingway. (pp. 37-56). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Łuczak, E. (2017). Ernest Hemingway: ostani z wielkich modernistów. Wstęp. In E. Łuczak (Ed.). Ernest Hemingway. (pp. 7-20). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Łuczak, E. (2016). W poszukiwaniu czarnego Beatu: "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note" LeRoi Jonesa/ Amiri Baraki. In M. Paryż (Ed.). Bitnicy. (pp. 177-192). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Ziarkowska, J. & Łuczak, E. (2015). Wstęp. In J. Ziarkowska-Ciechanowska & E. Łuczak (Eds.). Pisarze pochodzenia indiańskiego: Momaday, Silko, Erdrich, Alexie, Vizenor. (pp. 7-18). : Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Łuczak, E. (2015). Wielokulturowość, ironia i solidarność: Louise Erdrich Klub śpiewajacych rzeźników. In J. Ziarkowska-Ciechanowska & E. Łuczak (Eds.). Pisarze pochodzenia indiańskiego: Momaday, Silko, Erdrich, Alexie, Vizenor. (pp. 121-136). : Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Łuczak, E. (2015). Historia, pamięć i estetyka ciszy w "Widoku z Castle Rock". In M. Bucholtz (Ed.). Alice Munro: Wprowadzenie do twórczości. (pp. 264-293). Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek.
Łuczak, E. (2013). "Pisanie jest walką"--męski neohuduizm Ishmaela Reeda. In M. Paryż & A. Preis-Smith (Eds.). Amerykański western literacki w XX wieku. Między historią, fantazją a ideologią. (pp. ). Warszawa: Czuły Barbarzyńca.
Łuczak, E. (2013). Toni Morrison a amerykanskie jeremiady. In E. Łuczak (Ed.). Toni Morrison. (pp. ). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Łuczak, E. (2013). Eugenic Humanism and Frank Yerby's Plantation Romance. In R. Cantu (Ed.). An Insatiable Dialectic: Essays on Critique, Modernity, and Humanism. (pp. 88-103). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Łuczak, E. B. (2013). Coś więcej niż kłótnia rodzinna: Toni Morrison jako krytyk społeczny i literacki. In E. Łuczak (Ed.). Toni Morrison. (pp. 163-183). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Łuczak, E. B. (2013). Powrót do domu w Pieśni Salomonowej: Nostalgia a budowanie tożsamości. In E. Łuczak (Ed.). Toni Morrison. (pp. 75-92). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Older publications can be found on the complete list in PBN
Other
I am the author of Mocking Eugenics: American Culture against Scientific Hatred (Routledge, 2021), which examines the rise of American anti-eugenic satire in Hollywood, theatre, and literature in the pre–World War II period; Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination (Palgrave, 2015), which explores the impact of eugenic discourse on American literature; and How Their Living outside America Affected Five African American Authors: Toward a Theory of Expatriate Literature (Mellen Press, 2010), which analyzes African American expatriate fiction of the 1960s. I am also the co-author of Pathologizing Black Bodies: The Legacy of Plantation Slavery (Routledge Studies in African American Literature, Routledge, 2023) and Pisarki Chicanas (WUM, 2025).
I have served as editor or co-editor of eight additional volumes, including William Faulkner (WUW, 2022); New Cosmopolitanisms, Race and Ethnicity: Cultural Perspectives (with S. Dayal and A. Pochmara, de Gruyter, 2019); Ernest Hemingway (Warsaw University Press, 2017); Toni Morrison (Warsaw University Press, 2013); Pisarze pochodzenia indiańskiego: Momaday, Silko, Erdrich, Alexie, Vizenor (with J. Ziarkowska, Warsaw University Press, 2015); In Other Words: Dialogizing Race, Ethnicity and Postcoloniality (with Wierzchowska and Ziarkowska, Peter Lang, 2012); Czarno na białym: Afro-Amerykanie, którzy poruszyli Amerykę (with A. Antoszek, Warsaw University Press, 2009); and Mosaics of Words: Essays on the American and Canadian Literary Imagination (with A. Preiss-Smith and M. Paryz, Institute of English Studies, 2009). Together with M. Paryz, I co-edit a book series devoted to eminent American writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, published by Warsaw University Press.
My research has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships, including the Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship (University of California, Irvine; Johns Hopkins University), the American Philosophical Society, the Corbridge Trust research grant at Cambridge University, and the Fulbright Fellowship (University of California, Los Angeles, and University of California, Riverside). I also participated in the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University.
I have been invited to speak at universities across Europe and the United States on topics such as the presence of eugenic discourse in American culture and African American expatriate authors in Europe. My visiting lectures have included the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; California State University, Los Angeles and San Bernardino; the State University of New York, Buffalo; Colorado State University, Fort Collins; the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; the University of California, Riverside and Los Angeles; Universidad de Santiago de Compostela; Universität Innsbruck; and the Hebrew University. Since 2018, I have been a visiting professor in the summer program of NUUA, Nanjing, China.
From 2021 to 2024, I had the honor of serving as President of the Polish Association for American Studies.