Naomi Caffee
Assistant Professor of Russian
Russophone literature and visual culture of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Arctic; postcolonial studies; environmental humanities; global Indigenous literary studies; literary translation; language and area studies pedagogy.
BA 2004 Grinnell College.
MA 2008, PhD 2013 University of California, Los Angeles.
Reed College 2018–.
Naomi Caffee specializes in issues of postcolonial identity and transnational connectivity in the works of writers and culture workers from Central Asia, the Caucasus, Siberia, and the Circumpolar North. She has a BA in Russian from Grinnell College (2004) and an MA (2008) and PhD (2013) in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UCLA. Prior to her arrival at Reed in 2018, she taught at Santa Monica College, UCLA, and the University of Arizona.
Naomi's research has been published in Russian Language Journal, Russian Literature, Journal of Central Eurasian Studies, and Experiment: a Journal of Russian Culture, as well as in the edited volumes Picturing Russian Empire (2023), Russia in Asia: Interactions, Imaginations, and Realities (2020) and The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies (2011).
Her collaborative projects include “Beyond Caricature,” a digital archive of early 20th century political caricature from the South Caucasus, and “Russophone Voices,” a public humanities collective that brings together authors, scholars, and readers for conversations on contemporary Russophone literature. She is also a co-editor of Tulips in Bloom, a forthcoming anthology of Central Asian literature in English translation.
At Reed Naomi teaches Humanities 110, all levels of the Russian language, and Russian literature from the Medieval period to the present. She also teaches courses on interdisciplinary and comparative topics, including “Nuclear Literatures,” “Multicultural Russia,” and an upcoming Environmental Humanities course entitled "Arctic Awakenings."