Reflections of an Adoptee Researcher: Elizabeth Raleigh's Musings on Critical Adoption Studies

abstract:Since its inception over fifteen years ago, the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture (ASAC) has been bringing together humanities and social science scholars to create the interdisciplinary field of Critical Adoption Studies. Although she missed the inaugural conference in Tampa in 2005, Elizabeth Raleigh was first introduced to this organization at the Pittsburgh conference in 2007. Since then, she has been a steadfast attendee and participant. In many ways, her own scholarly trajectory grew in tandem with ASAC's. In this conversational interview, she reflects on the evolution of critical adoption studies and how it shaped her as an academic. Tackling questions such as the most productive lines of inquiry in adoption studies; the disciplinary and topical edges of the field; and the areas that are ripe for future research, in this short piece, Raleigh probes the paradoxes of adoptive kinship and biogenetic connection.