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About Me

I teach both halves of the World History survey (HIST 111 and 112), a 200-level course on the Holocaust (HIST 240), and upper-level courses on Modern European History such as Twentieth Century European History, the First World War, and Gender and History. I have won the William Oxley Thompson Award for Outstanding Teaching, the Cora I. Orr Award for Outstanding Service, and the William Raney Harper Award for Outstanding Scholarship.

Muskingum University named me as the Miriam Schwartz Faculty Scholar in January 2023, to support educational programming about the Holocaust. In 2022-2023, both the Ohio Holocaust and Genocide Memorial and Education Commission and the Holocaust Education Foundation awarded me grants to organize and lead a teaching institute for public school teachers in Social Studies and Language Arts in June 2024. I have run workshops on teaching the Holocaust for the Holocaust Education Resource and Outreach Program at the University of Connecticut, for the Ohio Holocaust and Genocide Memorial and Education Commission, Congregation Beth Tikvah in Columbus, OH, and the Holocaust and Education Resource Center in Milwaukee, WI.

Recent Conference Activity:

I presented on my research at Beyond Camps and Forced Labour in January 2026 on appeals submitted by Displaced Persons to the International Refugee Organization (IRO) between 1947-1951. This presentation, entitled “Bona Fide DPs or Migrants? The Complicated World of IRO Rejections and Appeals,” explains the “on the ground” decision making critical to understanding the divisions drawn between “bona fide” or genuine refugees and economic migrants.

Recent Workshop Activity:

“Genuine Refugees & the Creation of Backstories: The Impacts of Repatriation Surveys & Screening in Postwar Germany,” Center for the Advancement of Holocaust Studies (CAHS) at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, July 2024.

“Agents of Witnessing: Stateless Persons, Belonging, and Citizenship,” Feeling and Belonging Seminar, German Studies Association, October 2023.

“Rumors amid the Rubble: Jews and the Rumor Culture of Postwar Germany,” Knowledge on the Move, German Historical Institute Workshop, April 2022.

“Gender, Emotions, & Experiences of the Stateless in the Postwar Period,” Reimagining Citizenship Virtual Workshop, March 2022 & August 2022.

Recent Publications

“Geography and the Aftermath of the Holocaust,” in Teaching Holocaust Geographies in Middle and Secondary Schools: Promoting Inquiry into Space, Persecution, and Civic Engagement, Volume II, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2026 (forthcoming).

“The Stateless Struggle to Belong in the Postwar Period,” in Reimagining Citizenship, Rachel Chin and Samuel Huneke (eds.), Cornell University Press, 2025: 25-45.

Co-Editor, Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, July 2020).
https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5767.htm

• Co-author, Introduction: The Challenges and Necessity of Teaching the Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century
• Co-author, Chapter 3: Legislation as a Path to Persecution
• Author, Chapter 9: Resistance and Rescue

“Postwar Food Rumors: Security, Victimhood, and Fear,” in Food, Culture, and Identity in Germany’s Century of War, Heather Benbow and Heather Perry (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan, December, 2019: 177-200.

“Who Was ‘Worthy’?: How Empathy Drove Policy Decisions about the Uprooted in Occupied Germany, 1945-1948,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 32 (1), 2018: 8-28.

Media Coverage

Social Media

Country Focus

Germany

Expertise by Geography

Germany, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

Modern, 20th century

Expertise by Topic

Food History, Gender, Genocide, Holocaust & Nazi Persecution, Human Rights, Migration & Immigration, Women, World War II