“Inspired by literary anthropologist Wolfgang Iser Maja believes in the border crossing between reality and fiction. Nourishing the ideational departure into abstraction, anthropology provides the goods of social fact suggestibility based on truths.”
She works with field notes, diaries, monographs.
Maja studies Society.
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A Polish national from Warsaw, Maja Nazaruk defended a doctoral dissertation at the University of Montreal about epistemology (the construction of knowledge) in the works of the founder of modern anthropology Bronislaw Malinowski. After novice trials with German, Russian and Farsi, her interest in comparative literature drove her to successfully pursue the study of Italian literature (in the original) at Middlebury College in Vermont, Ukrainian language at Harvard and the University of Greifswald, as well as Lithuanian language at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. Maja was a visiting professor of Québécois studies at the Federale Universidade in Brazil in 2011. Her recent articles about Vincent Crapanzano have found a home in the Ethnographic Review of the N.N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (named after a beloved Russian 19th century explorer of Papua New Guinea whom every child in Moscow knows) at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Canadian Journal of Native Studies.
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Maja Nazaruk completed a Specialist in Peace and Conflict Studies, a major in Political Science and a minor in French Literature at the University of Toronto before undertaking a joint Master in Semiotics and French Literature. After many years struggling with health, she defended a doctoral dissertation at the University of Montreal about epistemology (the construction of knowledge) in the works by the founder of modern anthropology Bronislaw Malinowski.
Her interest in comparative literature drove her to pursue the study of foreign languages at the post-graduate level. Notably, she studied Italian literature in the original language at the master’s level at Middlebury College (in Vermont) with Prof. Roberto Bigazzi from the University of Siena and Prof. Gino Tellini from the University of Florence. She studied Ukrainian at Harvard University and at Universität Greifswald. She pursued beginner Lithuanian language classes at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas having reached level B1 by the year 2025 in what is the oldest Indo-European language. Unfinished linguistic projects included German and Farsi.
Since 2022, she works as French Teacher at the Ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration of the government of Québec where she offers language classes level A2-B2 to immigrants.
Other faculty positions included contracts at the French school of The Refugee Centre of Concordia University, Dawson College and the post-secondary institution Cégep Marie-Victorin.
Maja was a visiting professor in Québécois studies at the Federale Universidade in Brazil in 2011, a position sponsored by the Association Internationale d’Études Québécoise (AIEQ).
Her previous book includes Le tourisme sexuel: marchés de désir (2011) published in Paris with L’Harmattan Press, a débutante work of social science about gender exploitation based on field work with destitute women who fought for their livelihood through prostitution in Cambodia under tutelage from the anthropologist prof. Frédéric Bourdieu from the French Research Institute for Development and the University of Paris-Panthéon Sorbonne. The book has been acquired by 62 world libraries including Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Recent articles published by the Polish scholar include works about Vincent Crapanzano in the Ethnographic Review of the N.N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at Russian Academy of Sciences and the Canadian Journal of Native Studies (2024).
Maja published twice in the same issue of the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford about Clifford Geertz in Morocco and the vulnerable writing of Ruth Behar.
Her articles include two publications in each, the journal Anthropos: the International Review of Anthropology and Linguistics and the International Journal of Anthropology curated by the European Anthropological Association and the University of Florence.
Her other anthropological writings can be found in Suomen Anthropologi: the Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, the University of Ljubjana’s Anthropological Notebooks (which received many mentions), Rivista di Scienze Sociali in Foggia and the Global Journal of Anthropology Research in Karachi.
Literary articles follow on the topic of subjectivity at Iasi University’s journal Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences, on the topic of John Luther Adam’s music at the University of Montreal revue Possibles as well as on émigré writing at Dalhousie French Studies.
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“Because of my goose jacket I get properly excused/thrown out from the Portuguese speaking place. (I want to burn my goose jacket and spread the ashes in the Ganges river!)
It is a social club where some men sit at the bar, a dark woman curled hairs at the back alone, amid the smoke, souls hurt by life.
One, two, a third one by the window, solitary—sat. Gouached homelands dissolved into the abyss of capitalism, withdrawn. Globus sensation from false promises, sighs disgorged for mothers, siblings, beloved, time chagrin in dried out eyes, it’s been a drought after a deluge of tears—on Christmas day.
Point ignorants, point ignorés, docile but resigned, two men shuffle cards, honourable but no izzat at stake. Two metal bowls of translucent pearl Lupini beans—Tremoços, on the chair. They say: “It’s Christmas. We’re playing.”
The owner, himself on the phone, hangs up. Aggressively checks my phone, Protection Anxiety, NO PHOTOS.
Outside, another man. Bearded like Žižek? Or Bocelli—but not blind. Sees me, sees inside my Morskie Oko Tatras lake, Smokes. Raises his eyes—shining lucioles, no prejudice, blue ghosts at twilight, from Coïnbre? intrigued. —Brazilian or Portuguese? —Portuguese. —I’m Polish, he’s Russian. —Todos Europeos, he says gently. I feel his warmth.—I don’t speak English. Our eyes cross. We embrace in a hug, I learned that from an Israeli soldier at the gas station, in Tel Aviv (haven’t received a hug from a stranger since). “Feliz Navidad.” He turns to me and intends to communicate, strikes me with a line, shares—a proverb? I catch some whisper interlaced with “Deus/dois.” He explains with his hand, dois “like two,” repeats, repeats. I don’t understand—. We kiss on the cheek. In this land, you don’t kiss. In no land you kiss no kin, Dead Sea? But this man you kiss direito em linhas tortas (Portuguese: straight in crooked lines)—empyrean blessing. Who he was and what it meant, I’ll never know, Todos Europeos.
Dead Sea, that’s where strange men share a food par terre and a night’s rest, in their clay dwelling. Oxymoron of Oste/Eros = Hospitality and Thanatos = Death. Boska milość i smierć, w soli.”
—Toronto on St. Clair West, 2019.
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