European Forum on US History: Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska

Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska is an associate professor of history at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw. She specializes in the social and cultural history of the United States and Poland, as well as in transnational history. Her research focuses in particular on women’s and gender history, the history of public health and reproduction, and the history of social movements and immigration. She has been a visiting fellow at the University of Maryland (2024–2025), the University of Illinois (2020), and the University of Notre Dame (2012).

Her presentation focuses on the narratives and experiences of predominantly Catholic Polish women who migrated to the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century, using the concept of labor as an analytical framework. Her analysis concentrates on the ways in which the reproductive labor carried out by Polish women contributed to the reproduction of the American labor force. Leaving Polish lands at a time of demographic and social change, these women’s arrival in the United States sparked debates among the American public about their “fecundity,” unsettling nativists and eugenicists. By examining these discussions, she further explores how Polish American communities approached reproductive practices and how Polish ethnic migrants attempted to regulate their fertility through abortion and contraception.

See for full invitation here.