Brigid O’Keeffe,
Department of History, Brooklyn College

“Pornography or Authenticity?
The Politics of Romani Women’s Performance on the Early Soviet Stage”

Brigid O’Keeffe teaches in the department of history at Brooklyn College specializing in Russian and Soviet history. She is the author of New Soviet Gypsies: Nationality, Performance, and Selfhood in the Early Soviet Union (2013) from University of Toronto Press, and is currently working on a book-length research project examining Esperanto, citizen diplomacy, and internationalism in Russia from 1887 to 1939. She has contributed articles to the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice and Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History and a chapter in Russia’s People of Empire: Life Stories from Eurasia, 1500 to the Present. Fellowships she’s received include from IREX, Fulbright-Hays, and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Fellowship for Outstanding Teaching. Her blog post at NYU’s Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, discussed “How (Not) to Talk About Roma.” She’s co-organized panels for the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies on Slavic internationalism in the 1920s, why Roma history is important, Jewish and Romani narratives of their 20th century expriences, and “The Science of Everyday Life in the Soviet Union, as well as presented papers at the Association for the Study of Nationalities; Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; inaugural conference in Romani Studies, and many other meetings. O’Keeffe is an executive board member of the Northeast Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Conference.

at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies
4:30 – 6 p.m.
New York University
285 Mercer Street, 7th floor
(between Waverly and Washington Place)