This event will explore the experiences of African-Americans who have studied, taught and conducted research in Russia or focusing on Slavic languages, literatures and cultures, an academic field in which they are seriously underrepresented. It will include interactive discussion among the speakers and audience on the unique challenges of studying and traveling, as part of an underrepresented minority, in a region of the world which has historically and recently had an uneasy relationship with racial diversity, despite official Soviet-era pronouncements on the “friendship of peoples.”