Ann Ostendorf is a historian of early America whose scholarship explores issues of identity, race, empire, and nation, especially related to the Romani diaspora. She is at work on a manuscript that explores the linked mobilities of Romani people with ideas held about them throughout early modern Atlantic empires. Her collection, The Romani Atlantic (Cambridge University Press, 2026), compiles five centuries of Romani people's transatlantic circulations, interactions, connections, and exchanges. Other Romani-related scholarship has appeared in Romani Studies, Critical Romani Studies, and Frühneuzeit-Info, among others, and has been translated into Polish and Czech. Her 2021 article, “Louisiana Bohemians: Community, Race, and Empire,” published in Early American Studies, won the Louisiana Historical Association’s prize for best article in Louisiana history. She has also written on early American music culture, including her monograph, Sounds American (University of Georgia Press, 2011). She was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar to Japan in 2019/2020.
“Early Modern Transatlantic Deportations of Romani People.” In Deportation Practices and Deportation Experiences in the Early Modern Period, ed. Mathias Beer and Stephan Steiner (forthcoming).
The Romani Atlantic. Edited with Martin Fotta. Cambridge University Press, 2026. Open Access.
“Five Hundred Years of Romani Atlantic History: Flows, Circulations and Migrations that Made the Modern World.” With Martin Fotta, in The Romani Atlantic, ed. Martin Fotta and Ann Ostendorf. Cambridge University Press, 2026.
“Familiar Outsiders Abroad: Relational Racialization in the Romani Atlantic World.” In The Romani Atlantic, ed. Martin Fotta and Ann Ostendorf. Cambridge University Press, 2026.
“The Limits and Opportunities of Romani American History.” Romani Studies 34(1) (2024): 13–38.
“Louisianští Romové: Konstrukce rasy v koloniálním Karibiku.” Romano Dzaniben 28 (2021): 33–55. (Louisiana Romani: Constructing Race in the Colonial Caribbean)
“Louisiana Bohemians: Community, Race, and Empire.” Early American Studies (Fall 2021): 659–698. Winner of the Louisiana Historical Association’s Glenn R. Conrad Prize for best article in Louisiana history.
“‘To Get Himself Out of Slavery”: Escape, Justice, and Honor in the Life of a Colonial French Louisiana Bohemian (Gypsy).” Frühneuzeit-Info 31 (Fall 2020): 140–156. “Novel Adventures: Using The Journey to the West to Teach Tang China History and Culture.” Education About Asia 25 (Fall 2020): 12–17.
“Racializing American ‘Egyptians’: Shifting Legal Discourse, 1690s–1860s.” Critical Romani Studies 2 (Fall 2019): 42–59.
“The Mythical Musical Boatmen: Integrating National Icons in Early American Culture.” American Music 37 (Summer 2019): 197–228.
“Music of the Early American Republic.” The American Historian 19 (February 2019): 14–19.
“Contextualizing American Gypsies: Experiencing Criminality in the Colonial Chesapeake.” Maryland Historical Magazine 113 (Fall/Winter 2018): 192–222.
“‘An Egiptian and noe Xtian Woman’: Gypsy Identity and Race Law in Early America.” Journal of Gypsy Studies 1 (2017): 5–15.
Sounds American: National Identity and the Music Cultures of the Lower Mississippi River Valley, 1800-1860. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2011.
