IHNATOWICZ Ewa

Born on 4 November 1951 in Zduńska Wola; daughter of the historian Ireneusz Ihnatowicz and the librarian Jadwiga, née Kalinowska. She lived with her parents in Lodz until 1957 before moving to Otwock and then, in 1960, to Warsaw after her father was appointed to a post at the University of Warsaw (UW) and her mother to a post at the National Library. Ihnatowicz attended the J. Dąbrowski Grammar School No. XXXVII. As a schoolgirl, she took an educational trip to the Soviet Union in 1966. She completed her advanced secondary education in 1969 and started studying Polish philology at UW. After graduating with a master's degree in 1974, awarded for her dissertation Sewer w oczach współczesnych (Sever in Contemporary Eyes) which was supervised by Prof. Janina Kulczycka-Saloni, she remained at the university and was appointed an assistant at the Polonicum Centre of Polish Language and Culture for Foreigners. In 1975, she was a Polish language tutor and lecturer in Polish literature at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität in Greifswald. She also visited other regions of East Germany during this time. In 1976, she published a report in "Przegląd Humanistyczny" (no. 5) on the course in Polish Language and Culture for Italian Slavonicists and Polish Studies Scholars that was held at UW. That year she also started a doctoral degree at UW. She was appointed senior assistant at the Institute of Polish Literature at UW in 1979. She made her debut in 1983 with the article Kalendarze 2. poł. XIX w. jako źródło do badań literackich – „Kalendarz Ungra” (Calendars of the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century as Source Material in Literary Studies: The Unger Calendar), which appeared in the edited volume Problemy literatury polskiej okresu pozytywizmu (Polish Literature in the Positivist Era, vol. 2; Wrocław 1983). The same year, she defended her doctoral thesis „Tygodnik Ilustrowany” 1859-1886 jako pismo literackie ("Tygodnik Ilustrowany" 1859-1886 as a Literary Journal) at UW. She was supervised by Prof. Janina Kulczycka-Saloni and from 1984 worked as a lecturer at the university. She combined teaching with research on literature of the Positivist and Young Poland periods. She published articles and reviews in journals and periodicals including "Przegląd Humanistyczny" (from 1983), "Kwartalnik Historii Prasy Polskiej" (1987-88), "Guliwer" (1991-93), and "Nowe Książki" (1991-94 and 1997). She collaborated with the Municipal Museum of Zduńska Wola and the Society of Friends of Zduńska Wola (Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Zduńskiej Woli). She worked to popularize nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. From 1985 she held lectures for schools and libraries across Poland, while she also appeared on radio and television programmes discussing writers from this period. She went on numerous foreign trips, visiting the great European museums in the early 1990s, while in 1996 she followed the footsteps of J.I. Kraszewski and went to Volhynia, Polesia and Lithuania. She was awarded a habilitation degree in 1996 for her book Literacki świat rzeczy. O realiach w pozytywistycznej powieści obyczajowej (The Literary World of Things: Realities in classical novels). She was subsequently appointed professor at UW and worked at the Department of Positivist and Young Poland Literature, which later became the Department for the Literature and Culture of the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century. She also conducted research at the Centre for Modernist Literature in Central and Eastern Europe which was established at the Department in 2009. Between 1997 and 2002, she was head of the editorial committee of the student journal "Młoda Polonistyka". From 2008 she was head of the editorial team of the new yearbook established at UW, "Prace Filologiczne. Seria Literaturoznawcza", which in 2011 became "Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo". She was appointed editor-in-chief of this journal. She also taught at the Faculty of Polish Philology at the Alexander Gieysztor Academy of Humanities in Pułtusk (Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczna im. A. Gieysztora) from 1996 to 2006 and at the Warsaw branch of the State Theatre School from 1995 to 1998, which in 1996 became the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw (Akademia Teatralna). She was made state-appointed professor in 2012. She retired in 2018. She was awarded the Medal of the Commission of National Education in 2005 and the Gold Long Service Medal in 2010. She lives in Warsaw.