This episode explores the wave of Soviet dancers who defected to the United States and the West during the Cold War.

Dr. Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History and former Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. She teaches American and women's history, with a focus on the late 19th and early 20th century and additional research interests in the history of childhood, the history of education, and American Jewish history. Dr. Klapper is the author ofJewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920 (NYU Press, 2005); Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880-1925 (Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2007); and Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890-1940 (NYU Press,2013). Her scholarship has been awarded grants and fellowships from an array of sources, including the American Jewish Archives, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women at Harvard University, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.