Teaching Interests
Holocaust & Genocide Studies; Digital Humanities; Memories & Representations of War; Holocaust Literature and Film; Modern Jewish History; American Jewish History
Recent Courses
History 77, Visualizing American Jewish History, Fall 2018 | UC Santa Cruz
This course is a survey of the Jewish experience in America interpreted through digital means. Mapping, data visualization and multi-modal storytelling methods help us understand the religious, cultural, and political activities of American Jews. In particular, we use these tools to juxtapose a collective Jewish identity with individual voices and experiences. To do so, we will consider how data and demography have become central in assessing the American Jewish community and how podcasts have become a space for expressing a range of challenging and interconnected American Jewish identities. Our approach to these tools will be guided by central themes including immigration, modern antisemitism, gender, religious practice and identity, communal life, and an American response to the Holocaust. Centering digital methods in our examination of American Jewish History will allow us to consider historical trends alongside the lived experience of American Jews while also providing insight into how Jews have collected and told their own history.
Throughout these various approaches to the history of American Jewry, we will remain attuned to broader questions about anti-Semitism, assimilation, and secularization, as we focus on how individual Jews understand their place in a broader community and how they enact and pass on Jewish identity.
History 185N, The Holocaust in a Digital World, Winter 2018 + Fall 2016 | UC Santa Cruz
This course explores how digital tools change the way we know about the Holocaust. During the quarter students focus on (1) critically understanding and analyzing digital representations of the Holocaust and (2) using and developing skills to engage with knowledge about the Holocaust through digital tools.
To do so, the course highlights a variety of representational forms including films, television, video testimony, online databases and repositories, museum exhibits, memorial websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and more. By tracing representations of the Holocaust across platforms and over time, students discuss how changes in technology and media intersect with developments in international politics and cultural norms to define narratives about the Holocaust and its survivors. They also learn to use digital methodologies to build maps, perform text-based quantitative analysis, and curate online exhibits.
Past Teaching Experience
Judaic Studies 211, The Holocaust, Fall 2013 | University of Southern California
Honors Collegium 2, Comparative Study of Genocide, Fall 2012, Winter 2009 – 2012 | UCLA
German 59, Holocaust in Literature and Film, Winter 2013 | UCLA
History 183A, Third Reich and Jews (1933-1939), Winter 2009 (reader) | UCLA
History 183B, The Third Reich and the Jews: The Years of Extermination (1939-1945), Spring 2009 (reader) | UCLA
Honors 125, Communities and Nations in Conflict: Theory and Practice of International Conflict Resolution, Spring 2013 | UCLA
History 1C, Introduction to Western Civilization: Circa 1715 to Present, Fall 2009 | UCLA
History 182, Jewish Civilization: The Encounter with Great World Cultures, Spring 2009 (reader) | UCLA
Additional Teaching Experience
Workshops
“Getting started with Digital Humanities”
“Research Methods for the Humanities”; “Building a Better Online Identity”; “Twitter 101”; “Zotero”
Invited Lectures
“Doing Digital History: Memories/Motifs as Case Study,” Digital History (History 100A) | UC Santa Cruz
“Digital Exhibit Building,” Art of the Book in Western Europe from 600-1500 (HAVC 191R) | UC Santa Cruz
“Persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany: From Hitler’s ascension to power (1933) to Liberation (1945),” Comparative Genocide (Honors 2) | UCLA
“Forced Migration: Holocaust as Case Study,” International Politics of Forced Migration (Politics 164) | UC Santa Cruz
“Roots of Nazism: Traditional Anti-Judaism to Modern Anti-Semitism,” Comparative Genocide (Honors 2) | UCLA