Ph.D., 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
Current Projects
Dr. Roman is working on a new research project focusing on dissent in the 1960s and
1970s.
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.
"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, forthcoming).
"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.
Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. Racism, 1928-1937
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012).
"Race, politics and US Students in 1930s Soviet Russia," Race & Class53, 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.
"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.
"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).
