dr Anna Kurowicka

Anna Kurowicka received a PhD in cultural studies at the University of Warsaw for a dissertation entitled “Politics of Asexuality. A Critical Analysis of Discourses on Asexualities.” Her 2015 research stay at Emory University was funded by the Kościuszko Foundation, and in 2024 she received a scholarship funded by the National Agency for Academic Exchange to spend a semester at Humboldt University in Berlin. As part of an international research team led by Prof. Tomasz Basiuk and Prof. Eveline Kilian (Queer Theory in Transit: Reception, Translation, and Production of Queer Theory in Polish and German Contexts; 2023-2026, National Science Center), she investigates the reception of queer theory in Polish English and American Studies. She has published on asexuality, science fiction, and fantasy in Sexualities, Teksty Drugie, Feminist Formations, and Science Fiction Film and Television. Her book, Queer Asexual Figures in Popular Fiction and Television, is forthcoming with Manchester University Press in 2027.

Role at the ASC

ASC Deputy Director

Member of the Gender/Sexuality Research Group

Member of the Speculative Texts and Media Research Group

Achievements

Ministry of Science and Higher Education scholarship for outstanding young researchers (2025)

member of the European Association for American Studies Women’s Network Steering Committee

National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) scholarship for a research stay at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2024)

National Science Center research grant, Asexuality in American Popular Culture (SONATA, 2021-25)

Kościuszko Foundation Grant (2015)

Publications

“Contested Intersections: Asexuality and Disability, Illness, or Trauma. Sexualities 28, no. 1-2 (2025): 180-201

“Queering Dark Academia.” In Reading Literature and Theory at the Intersections of Queer and Class: Class Notes and Queer-ies, edited by Maria Alexopoulos, Tomasz Basiuk, Susanne Hochreiter, Tijana Ristic Kern, 79-91. New York: Routledge, 2024.

(with Jędrzej Burszta). “Repetition with a Difference: House of the Dragon and the Queer Temporalities of Fantasy. Science Fiction Film and Television 17, no. 3 (2024): 321-337.

“’Jarek, Get on Tinder:” Anti-Nonsexual Slogans at Polish 2020 Abortion Protests.” In Asexualities Feminist and Queer Perspectives, Revised and Expanded Ten-Year Anniversary Edition, edited by KJ Cerankowski and Megan Milks, 94-110. New York: Routledge, 2024.

“Cyberpunk ucieleśniony: Feministyczne reinterpretacje gatunku.” [“Embodied Cyberpunk: Feminist Reinterpretations of the Genre”]. Teksty Drugie 6/2021, 91-108.

“‘The only story I will ever be able to tell:’ Nonsexual Erotics of Friendship in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Tana French’s The Likeness.” Feminist Formations 32, no. 3 (Winter 2020): 24-50.

Courses (selected)

(A)sexualities in American Culture and Society: Redefining Sex, Sexuality, and Intimacy

American Fan Cultures

New American Intimacies

American Campus Novel

Introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies

BA Seminar: Sexualities in American Culture and Society