"There's nothing like reading your secret police file to make you wonder who you really are." With these words Katherine Verdery begins her book My Life as a Spy, an attempt to understand the practices and mind-set of the Romanian Secret Police, who had kept her under constant surveillance for over three years of research between 1973 and 1989. In the present talk she describes what reading this file was like and meditates upon her relations with friends who informed on her, as well as with secret police officers she tracked down.

Guest lecturer: Katherine Verdery, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Julien J. Studley Faculty Scholar and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology