Alice Volfson

Graduate Student Associate

A.M. Candidate in Regional Studies—REECA

Alice Volfson graduated from Connecticut College in 2023 with a degree in government and Slavic studies. Her undergraduate thesis focused on Black American migration to the Soviet Union between the First and Second World wars. She conducted archival research at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the National Library of the Kyrgyz Republic. Through her research, she traced the evolution of race consciousness within the Soviet Union and the Communist Internationale, while critically assessing the "myth" of Soviet anti-racism in practice. Her current research focuses on Soviet Central Asian participation in the Asia-Africa Writers Conferences (1958–1988) and the creation of post-colonial culture between Africa and Central Asia during the Cold War.