Shareen Blair Brysac
Biography
Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Brysac attended the Juilliard School and graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University with a B.A. in Archaeology/Art History. While in college and subsequently she was a soloist with the dance companies of José Limon, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor and the New York City Opera companies.
After her retirement as a dancer, she worked as a photography editor and director of audio visual for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Random House publishers.
In 1974 she went to work for CBS first as a researcher and subsequently as a director, producer and writer of network documentary films for CBS News Specials and CBS Reports as well as for the magazine-format broadcasts, "On the Road with Charles Kuralt", "American Parade" and "Crossroads". Her documentaries include "1968", "American Dream, American Nightmare", "The Cowboy, Craftsman and Ballerina", "Juilliard and Beyond: A Life in Music", and "Picasso, Once in a Lifetime (with the Museum of Modern Art)."
Her films won of five Emmys, the George Foster Peabody Award, a Dupont Citation, the Writers Guild Award, gold and silver medals from the New York and Chicago Film Festivals, and a special award at the Edinburgh Film Festival (1979).
From 1985-1987 she was Program Manager for CUNY TV, the cable television station for the City University of New York. Concurrently she was a member of the Media Faculty of the City University of New York.
From 1987-89, Brysac was a freelance producer, director, writer, whose clients included American Express and Medstar Communications. In 1989 she founded and directed Campus Programming Service designed to bring foreign language programming to university television stations for which she received a Rockefeller Grant. She also received a D.A.A.D. grant for research in Germany in 1989.
From 1999-2005 she was a contributing editor of Archaeology Magazine. She has also published articles in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, Condé Nast Traveler, Lear's, The Nation, World Policy Journal and Military History Quarterly.
She has lectured at the National Archives, Library of Congress, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, Yale, Boston University, Washington University, St. Louis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Holy Cross, Western Connecticut State College, the University of Hawaii, the British Museum, Newark Museum, Explorers Club, Royal Asiatic Society (London), Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Maschinenbau, Essen (Germany) National Arts Club, German House, New York, German Cultural Foundation, Philadelphia, Asia Society (Houston), the New York Society Library and the Pequot, Weston, Westport and Easton Connecticut libraries.
Brysac is a former or current member of the Director's Guild of America, Writer's Guild of America, Women in Film, New York University’s Biography Seminar and the Authors' Guild. She spent a term in 2012, as a Senior Associate Member of St. Antony's College, Oxford.
Karl and Shareen live in New York City and Weston, Connecticut.
Books
The China Collectors: America's Century-Long Hunt for Asian Art Treasures (with Karl E. Meyer) Palgrave/Macmillan (2015)
Pax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds (with Karl E. Meyer) PublicAffairs (2012). Excerpts have appeared in The World Policy Journal and online at Foreign Policy.
Kingmakers: the Invention of the Modern Middle East (with Karl E. Meyer), WW Norton Publishers (2008). Excerpts have appeared in Harper’s Magazine and The World Policy Journal.
Tournament of Shadows: the Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia (with Karl E. Meyer), 1999. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, NY Times internet discussion selection for December 2001 and finalist for the international Gelber Prize for best book in the field of foreign affairs. It was also a selection of the History Book Club and a New York Times’ Notable Book of the Year. Excerpts appeared in World Policy Journal, Military History Quarterly and Archaeology. It was re-published with a new introduction by Basic Books in 2006.
Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra, Oxford University Press (2000). Finalist for the LA Times History Book of the Year. German edition (Scherz Verlag, Fall 2003). An excerpt appeared in Military History Quarterly. In 2008, Resisting Hitler was again optioned for a feature film.