Teaching
I am committed to fostering critical engagement with primary sources, encouraging students to think historically and analytically about the past and its ongoing impact. Across all my courses, I aim to create inclusive, thought-provoking learning environments that invite collaboration and curiosity.
In addition to teaching during the academic year, every summer I am a primary instructor and course designer for the Virginia Holocaust Museum’s Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute. In this role, I teach courses on the topic of Holocaust and genocide studies to educators throughout Virginia and the surrounding states. Topics include: Jewish responses to Nazi persecution, gendered persecution during the Holocaust, teaching the Holocaust with film and diaries, and rescue and resistance during the Holocaust. Please find a full course list below.
Fall 2025
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This course traces Jewish life from the 1492 expulsion of Sephardic Jews to today, examining how Jewish identity, culture, and community have evolved through moments of upheaval, innovation, and change. We explore shifting definitions of Jewish belonging, the impact of gender, diaspora, and diversity, and the roles of ritual, objects, and space in shaping Jewish life. Through close analysis of primary sources, students will engage with key questions about Jewish “groupness,” identity, and memory across time and place.
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How were Holocaust experiences shaped by gender? This independent study explores how Jewish women and men endured the events of 1933–1945, and how gender influenced survival, suffering, and resistance. Once overlooked, these questions have become central to Holocaust scholarship over the past 25 years. We examine the roles of sex, gender, and social control in both Nazi ideology and Jewish experiences—highlighting why no study of the Holocaust is complete without this lens.
Spring 2026
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This capstone course explores the richness and complexity of European Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust. Through primary sources, scholarship, and student-led research, we examine how Jewish communities lived, resisted, adapted, and remembered in the face of catastrophe. The course emphasizes historical context, cultural continuity and rupture, and the ethical challenges of studying trauma and memory
Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute (TEI) at the Virginia Holocaust Museum
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