Scholar Sarah Jane Nelson explores the layered histories of a Silver Age cigarette case.

Sarah Jane Nelson, Independent Researcher at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, follows the journey of a Silver Age cigarette case—tracing the memory and legacy of imperial Russia into émigré New York. The case bears more than fifty engraved signatures and sketches by Russian musicians, artists, and dancers, including folksinger Theodore Bikel, legendary ballerina Patricia Bowman, and two generations of the Sergievsky family. Through a historical and literary lens, Nelson illuminates the vibrant cultural networks that emerged among displaced Russians in mid-century New York, where memory, art, and identity intertwined in exile.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Sarah Jane Nelson is an author and musician who documents traditional folk music communities in North America, including those of émigré musicians from Eastern Europe. Her book Ballad Hunting with Max Hunter: Stories of an Ozark Folksong Collector, came out with the University of Illinois Press’s Music in America Series in 2023. She is currently at work on a community biography of Sasha Polinoff whose balalaika music formed her earliest soundscape. Nelson is interested in the intersection of mythmaking and representation of the émigré experience, and her story, recently published in Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore, explores the connection between the American Folk Revival and public interest in ethnic musical performance as reflected in Polinoff’s late-life story.

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Sarah Jane Nelson © Samuel Breslow