“Madame Comrade”

The People’s Ambassadress: The Forgotten Diplomacy of Ivy Litvinov. For Aeon, I wrote about how Ivy Litvinov, the English-born wife of Stalin’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs in the 1930s, charmed Americans and Brits with her wit, tea, and soft diplomacy. On behalf of the USSR, Ivy Litvinov spoke to the Anglophone West in a language it could understand, but always in her own distinctive voice.

Immigrant's Daughter

A personal reflection on how my dad's immigration story continues to inform my own.  A contribution to the "Immigrant Stories" project hosted by the NYU Jordan Center Blog.

The Roma Homeland That Never Was

Roma have been maligned throughout history as a "rootless" people without a homeland.  In this essay, I tell the shorter version of how, in the Stalinist 1930s, the Soviet Union considered creating a homeland for "Gypsies" within the boundaries of the USSR.

Teaching the Soviet Union as a Multiethnic Empire. For Peripheral Histories, I answered a few questions about teaching Russian and Soviet history and my approach to questions of diversity and inclusiveness in the classroom and on the syllabus.

“Life on Wheels” (1931) at Moscow’s State Gypsy Theatre Romen. For RomArchive, the Digital Archive of the Roma, I wrote an essay about the first play to be staged at Moscow’s State Gypsy Theatre Romen in 1931 and the theater’s development in the Stalinist 1930s.