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This biography of the Polish British anthropologist Maria Czaplicka (1884–1921) is also a cultural study of the dynamics of the anthropological collective presented from a researcher-centric perspective. Czaplicka, together with Bronis¿aw Malinowski, studied anthropology in London and later at Oxford, then she headed the Yenisei Expedition to Siberia (1914
–15) and was the first female lecturer of anthropology at Oxford.
She was an engaged feminist and an expert on political issues in Northern Asia and Eastern Europe. But this remarkable woman’s career was cut short by suicide. Like many women anthropologists of the time, Czaplicka journeyed through various academic institutions, and her legacy has been dispersed and her field materials lost.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Series Editors’ Introduction
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Women in Anthropology, Biographies in Academia
1. History of Anthropology as a Contemporary Research Field
2. The Anthropological Biography as a New Genre of Historical Writing
3. Why Her, Why Me, and Methods of Research and Sources Review
4. The Warsaw Radical Intelligentsia at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century
5. Maria Czaplicka’s Family Background and Polish Youth
6. Love, a Novel, and Poetry in Zakopane
7. Female Anthropologists in the British Association for the Advancement of Science
8. Women in the Royal Anthropological Institute, Folklore Society, and Royal Geographical Society
9. London Studies and the Beginnings of Czaplicka’s English Career
10. Robert Marett and Anthropological Research on Religion
11. The Ups and Downs of Anthropological Racial Discourse
12. The Oxford School of Anthropology and Work on Aboriginal Siberia
13. Preparations for the Siberian Expedition and Its Participants
14. Summer on the Yenisei and Everyday Fieldwork
15. Winter in the Tundra and the Results of the Expedition
16. Czaplicka’s Shamanism in Theory and Practice
17. Deconstructing the Concept of “Arctic Hysteria”
18. Shamans and the Discourse of the Third Sex
19. The Intrepid Traveler Returns
20. Physical Anthropology and the Concept of Race in Czaplicka’s Research
21. My Siberian Year as a Work of Literary Ethnographic Writing
22. Feeling at Home at Lady Margaret Hall and a New Life as an Oxford University Lecturer
23. A Trip Home and the Situation in Polish Ethnology
24. An Anthropologist Engaged in the Public Debate
25. America and Disillusionment
26. Another Visit to Poland, Work in Bristol, and a Tragic Decision
27. Research on Shamanism after Czaplicka and the Response to Her Work
28. “Through Arctic Siberia with My Camera,” or Biographies of Maria Czaplicka’s Field Photographs
29. Life after Life
Conclusion: Czaplicka as a Person and the Social Processes in Her Life
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Gräyna Kubica is an associate professor of social anthropology in the Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków. She coedited the volume
Malinowski between Two Worlds: The Polish Roots of an Anthropological Tradition.
Ben Koschalka is a British translator specializing in academic as well as literary texts. He lives and works in Kraków, Poland.
