We're so delighted to share this conversation with Ethel Brooks! We discuss feminism, Romani history, women's labor, fortune telling, and more!

Ethel Brooks is Chair of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Associate Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Sociology at Rutgers University. Brooks is a Tate-TrAIN Transnational Fellow at the University of the Arts London, where, in 2011-2012, she was the US-UK Fulbright Distinguished Chair. Brooks was appointed under President Obama to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, where she served from 2015-2020. She is Chair of the Board of the European Roma Rights Centre and member of the Bavarlipe Academy of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture, the RomaMoma Think Tank, and the US Delegation to the IHRA and its Roma Genocide Working Group. In 2022, Brooks was a curator for One Day We Shall Celebrate Again, the RomaMoma/OffBiennale contribution to Documenta 15 and contributed art and performance to Documenta 15 and to the 2022 and 2019 Venice Biennales. From 2022-2023, Brooks served as an editorial consultant for the Los Angeles TimesPodcast, Foretold.  Since 2007, she is co-Director of the annual Feminist Critical Analysis course in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Brooks is the author of the award-winning Unraveling the Garment Industry: Transnational Organizing and Women’s Work. Her current book project focuses on encampment, claim-staking, and Romani futures.

Our Romani crush this episode is all Romani women.

You can follow Ethel Brooks on Instagram and Twitter.

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You can find Jez on Instagram @jezmina.vonthiele, and on Twitter, TikTok, and Patreon, and you can find Jez’s vintage and curiosities shop Evil Eye Edit on Instagram @evileyeedit & Etsy.

You can find Paulina Verminski on Instagram @_paulina_v_ and at https://romaniholistic.com/. Follow Paulina’s store, Romani Holistic, in Newport Beach, CA, on Instagram @romaniholistic

Romanistan is hosted by Jessica Reidy/Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Verminski

Conceived of by Paulina Verminski

Edited by Viktor Pachas

With Music by Viktor Pachas

And Artwork by Elijah Vardo