Open gallery

Meredith L Roman, Ph.D

Associate Professor (History), Committee Member (President’s Council on Diversity & Inclusion): (585) 395-2010
mroman@brockport.edu
Office: Liberal Arts 311

Education

PhD, Michigan State University - May 2005, Russian History
Dissertation: “Another Kind of ‘Freedom’: The Soviet Experiment With Antiracism and Its Image as a ‘Raceless’ Society.”
M.A., Michigan State University - May 2000, Russian History
B.A., The College of New Jersey (summa cum laude) - May 1998, History

Areas of Specialty

History of the Soviet Union
Twentieth-Century Black Radicalism
Race in Modern Europe

Courses Taught

Race, Nationality, and Empire Building in Modern Russia
Stalinism
Race and Racism in Modern World History
Black Radicalism
Comparative History of African American and Russian Women
Racial Violence in the Making of Modern America
History of the Soviet Union
Twentieth-Century Europe
The Soviet Union in the Cold War
Migration, Protest, and Repression in the Twentieth Century
Black Diasporas in Modern Europe
Revolutions and Revolutionaries in the Twentieth Century

Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2012.
Dr. Nuala McGann Drescher Affirmative Action Leave, United University Professors, Fall 2009.
Research Enhancement Award, Michigan State University, 2004.
Muelder-Lowe Award for Future Professors of European History, Michigan State University, 2003-2004.
Research Enhancement Award, Michigan State University, 2003.
Muelder Four-Year Admissions Fellowship, Michigan State University, 2001-2005.
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship to study Azerbaijani, Indiana State University, Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center, 2001.
Merit Thesis Completion Fellowship, Michigan State University, 2000.

Soul to Soul: Americans’ Discovery of Yelena Khanga and the Promise of Russian-American Relations,” Journal of Russian American Studies 6, no. 1 (May 2022): 52-72.
“Antiracist Artifacts and Aspirations,” The Wayland Rudd Collection: Exploring Racial Imaginaries in Soviet Visual Culture, edited by Yevgeniy Fiks (Ugly Duckling Press, 2021), 153-158
“‘Armed and Dangerous’: The Criminalization of Angela Davis and the Cold War Myth of America’s Innocence,” Women, Gender, and Families of Color 8, no. 1 (2020): 87-111.
Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. Racism, 1928-1937 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012, 2019 paperback).
“Soviet ‘Renegades,’ Black Panthers and Angela Davis: The Politics of Dissent in the Soviet Press, 1968-1973,” Cold War History (2018): 2-17, published 31 May 2018, DOI10.1080/14682745.2018.1465932
“The Black Panther Party and the Struggle for Human Rights,” Spectrum: A Journal of Black Men 5 no, 1 (Fall 2016): 7-32.
“U.S. Lynch Law and the Fate of the U.S.S.R.: The Soviet Uses of American Racial Violence,” in Lynching in Global Perspective: New Approaches and Directions in the Historical Study of Global Violence, eds. William D. Carrigan and Christopher Waldrep (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 215-36.
“Forging Soviet Racial Enlightenment: Soviet Writers Condemn American Racial Mores, 1926, 1936, 1946,” The Historian 74, no. 3 (2012): 528-550.
“Race, politics and US Students in 1930s Soviet Russia,” Race & Class 53, no. 2 (October 2011): 58-76.
“Forging Freedom, Speaking Soviet Anti-Racism: African Americans and Alternate Strategies of Fighting American Racial Apartheid,” Critique: A Journal of Socialist Theory 39, no. 3 (August 2011): 371-389.
“Robert Robinson: Celebrity Worker in the U.S.S.R.” The Human Tradition in the Black Atlantic, 1500-2000, edited by Beatriz Mamigonian and Karen Racine(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 133-145.
“Racism in a ‘Raceless’ Society: Racial Violence at the Stalingrad Giant of Socialist Industry and Images of Soviet Racial Equality, August 1930,” International Labor and Working-Class History No. 71 (Spring 2007): 185-203.
“Making Caucasians Black: Moscow Since the Fall of Communism and the Racialization of Non-Russians” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 18, No. 2 (June 2002): 1-27.

“Black and Red: African Americans and the USSR,” University of Pittsburgh REEES Fall Series: Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies: The US and Russia, October 22, 2020.
“Escape from a ‘Living Death’: Concepts of Oppression and Freedom among Soviet Human Rights Defenders and U.S. Black Power Activists during the Cold War,” Soviet Socialism in Labor, Material Culture, and Migration: A Conference Honoring Lewis Siegelbaum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, March 23-24, 2018.
“Critical Pedagogies of Black Europe,” Roundtable, 41st Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Atlanta, GA, October 5-8, 2017.
“Conceptualizing Black Europe’s Past, Present, and Future(s),” Roundtable, The 101st Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, Richmond, VA, October 5-9, 2016.
“Soviet Attacks on U.S. Racial Apartheid and the Creation of the New Anti-Racist Man and Woman.” The Technologies of Truth: Propaganda Symposium, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ. January 22, 2016.
“Public Enemy No. 1: Soviet Intellectuals, Black Panthers, and the Struggle for Human Rights, 1966-1972,” History Colloquium Series, Department of History, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, September 16, 2015.
“Keepin’ It Real: African Americans and the Promise of Soviet Anti-Racism in the 1920s and 1930s,” Black History Month Speaker Series, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, February 26, 2013.
“Heroic Black Panthers, Bloody Pogroms, and Soviet Parasites: Representations of Dissent in the USSR, 1967-1972,” 45th National Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Boston, November 20-24, 2013.
“American Patriots and Soviet Traitors: The Politics of Dissent,” New York State Association of European Historians, SUNY Oswego, October 3-4, 2012.
“Reversing Race: Soviet Anti-Racism and the Experiment with American Integration, 1931-1932,” University of Rochester, Invited Talk, Department of History, December 3, 2009.
“Not So Black and White: Speaking Anti-Racism and the Experience of ‘Racelessness’ in Soviet Society,” 42nd National Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Los Angeles, CA, November 18-21, 2011.
“An American Road Trip and the Soviet Circus: The Strange Politics of Anti-Racism in the U.S.S.R. during the Popular Front Era,” New York State Association of European Historians, Siena College, September 24-25, 2010.
“Reversing Race: Soviet Anti-Racism and the Experiment with American Integration, 1931-1932,” University of Rochester, Department of History, December 3, 2009.
“Uncle Toms and White Chauvinists: The Soviet Experiment with Integration at the International Lenin School and the U.S.S.R.’s Image as an Anti-Racist Society,” 41st National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), Boston, MA, November 12-15, 2009.
“‘This is not Bourgeois America’: Black Body Politics, the Soviet Press, and Images of U.S. Racism and Soviet Anti-Racism, 1928-1935,” 32nd Annual Mid-Atlantic Slavic Conference, New York, NY April 4, 2009.
“The Black Male Body and Representations of American Racial Apartheid and Soviet Anti-Racism,” Conference of the Upstate New York Women’s History Organization, Geneva, NY, March 7, 2008.
“Anti-Empire, Anti-Racism: Representations of the Soviet Union as a Superior Society during the Interwar Era,” 39th Annual Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), New Orleans, Louisiana, November 15-18, 2007.
“Potemkinism: Fact and Fiction,” Roundtable Participant, 39th Annual Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), New Orleans, Louisiana, November 15-18, 2007.
“Forging Black Freedom Across the Atlantic: African Americans in the Soviet Union and the Internationalization U.S. Racism.” 91rst Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH), Atlanta, Georgia, September 28-October 1, 2006.
“Racism Cannot Exist Here: Cultivating the Image of the Soviet Union as a Raceless Society During the Interwar Era,” 120th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 5-8, 2006.
“Keepin’ it Real: African Americans in Moscow’s International Lenin School and the Demands that the Promises of Soviet ‘Racelessness’ Be Fulfilled, 1931-1932,” 3rd Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of the World African Diaspora (ASWAD), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 5-7, 2005.

Current Projects

Dr. Roman is working on a new research project focusing on dissent in the 1960s and 1970s.

Review Essays/ Book Reviews

Review of Amanda Brickell Bellows, American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Postemancipation Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) for the Journal of American History (March 2022)

Review of Anne-Marie Fortier, Uncertain Citizenship: Life in the Waiting Room (University of Manchester Press, 2021) in CHOICE Vol. 59, No. 7 (March 2022).

Review of Quito Swan, Pauulu’s Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice (University Press of Florida, 2020), H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. September, 2021.https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56392

Review of Erika Haber, Oz Behind the Iron Curtain: Aleksandr Volkov and the Magic Land Series (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) in the Journal of Russian American Studies 5, no. 1 (May 2021): 69-71.

Article Review of Douglas Selvage, “Operation ‘Denver’: The East German Ministry of State Security and the KGB’s AIDS Disinformation Campaign, 1985-1986.” Journal of Cold War Studies 21:4 (Fall 2019): 71-123 for H-Diplomatic History 17 November 2020 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_00907.
Review of Peter Furtado, Revolutions: How They Changed History and What They Mean Today (Thames & Hudson, 2020) in CHOICE Vol. 58, No. 7 (March 2021).
Adriana N. Helbig, Hip Hop Ukraine: Music, Race and African Migration in Anthropology of East Europe Review 35, no 1(2017): 80-81.
Review of Mary Stanton, Red, Black, White: The Alabama Communist Party, 1930-1950 (University of Georgia Press, 2019) in Journal of Southern History 86, no. 3 (August 2020): 746-747.
Review of Jeff Sahadeo, Voices from the Soviet Edge: Southern Migrants in Leningrad and Moscow (Cornell University Press, 2019). H-Russia, H-Net Reviews. April 2020.
“Making Race in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century United States,” Journal of American Ethnic History 35, no. 3 (Spring 2016): 99-103.
“Review of Lindsey R. Swindall, Paul Robeson: A Life of Activism and Art (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) in The NEP Era: Soviet Russia, 1921-1928 Vol. 12 (2014).
“Review of Joy Gleason Carew, Blacks, Reds, and Russians: Sojourners in Search of the Soviet Promise (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008) in The NEP Era: Soviet Russia, 1921-1928 Vol. 3 (Fall 2009).

Open gallery

Meredith L Roman, Ph.D

Education

Areas of Specialty

Courses Taught

Awards/Recognitions

Recent Publications

Presentations

Current Projects

Review Essays/ Book Reviews