Susan Williams

Susan Williams has recently been awarded an Institute for International Education Fulbright Fellowship for dissertation research in Romania for the 2006-2007 academic year.

Her dissertation, "'It's the Gypsy in Me': The Meaning of Romanian Roma (Gypsy) Identity in the Interwar Years," will compare the efforts of Romani intellectuals to create a cohesive group identity to the works of authors from different cultural backgrounds, nationalities, and genres in order to better understand how a variety of groups interpreted identity. Her research will include an analysis of the open interplay between writers of popular fiction and travel literature who focused on Roma and the Romani intellectuals themselves.

Williams will also probe the implication of the creation of identities to other groups. Why were Gypsies so important to writers in the interwar years and why was their engagement with modern life so difficult for these writers to understand? What can responses to Romani nationalism tell us about the fluidity and value of specific identities? The creation of a Romani identity in interwar Romania also provides a lens through which we can view the fashioning, contestation, and transformation of complex and often contradictory group and individual identities, not only of the Roma but of their observers. The choices made by Romani intellectuals and European and American writers alike speak to their relationship to the dominant discourse and their willingness to consume or manipulate this discourse for their own gain.

Williams explains that "by analyzing a unique gathering of representatives of a marginalized group in Romania during a key moment in European history, my dissertation will challenge existing understandings of majority and minority and one-dimensional interpretations of personal identity."