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

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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

  • This course examines how film and television shape public understanding of the Holocaust, asking what filmmakers choose to teach and why. Through analyzing works ranging from Nazi propaganda to Hollywood dramas and documentaries, we’ll explore the power, limitations, and responsibilities of screen portrayals of genocide.

Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute (TEI) at the Virginia Holocaust Museum

  • In this mini-course, I specialize in illuminating the diverse ways Jewish communities responded to Nazi persecution, emphasizing cultural resilience, spiritual creativity, and the many forms of agency that challenge one-dimensional narratives of victimhood.

  • This course highlights the full spectrum of resistance—armed, cultural, and spiritual—as well as rescue efforts across Europe, helping educators recognize how defiance and solidarity shaped Jewish and non-Jewish experiences under Nazism.

  • I bring experience integrating graphic narratives into Holocaust education, using visual storytelling to deepen historical understanding, strengthen empathy, and support accessible, age-appropriate learning.

  • In this mini-course, I emphasize the power of youth diaries, including those collected in Salvaged Pages, to humanize history and foreground individual voices, guiding educators in using personal narratives to enrich classroom inquiry.

  • My teaching explores the complex political and logistical barriers that made escape from Nazi Europe so difficult, helping learners understand how borders, immigration policies, and international indifference shaped survival.

  • For this topic, I focus on revealing the many forms of collaboration and complicity that enabled the Holocaust—from bureaucratic cooperation to local participation—encouraging nuanced discussion about moral accountability and societal responsibility.

  • My instruction centers marginalized histories, including the persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals, highlighting legal repression, camp experiences, and the postwar silencing and recovery of these stories.

  • I bring a gender-focused lens to Holocaust education, analyzing how gender shaped vulnerability, violence, resistance, and daily life, and helping participants understand the distinct experiences of women and men.

  • Using The Zone of Interest as a case study, this session considers how film can evoke moral discomfort and illuminate the banality of evil. Participants will discuss classroom strategies for teaching the Holocaust through contemporary cinema, guiding educators in using film to provoke critical reflection and historical insight.