Nadja Berkovich is Teaching Assistant Professor of Russian at the University of Arkansas. Her current research is on the genre of literary ethnography, focusing on the ways in which Russian and Jewish writers represented inorodtsy, the non-Christian ethnic subjects of the empire. She recently has published articles on Bogoraz’s sketches about the Gomel’ pogrom of 1903, and on memory of the Holocaust in the works of the Russian Austrian writer Vladimir Vertlib.
Dr. Ryan Calabretta-Sajder is Assistant Professor of Italian and Section Head and is currently serving as Interim Director of Gender Studies. Prof. Calabretta is additionally Affiliate Faculty in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies as well as Jewish Studies. His research focuses on Queer and Feminist theories in Contemporary Italian and Italian American literature and film, including Italian Jewry. He is the author of Divergenze in celluloide: colore, migrazione e identità sessuale nei film gay di Ferzan Özpetek (Celloid Divergences: Color, Migration, and Sexual Identity in the Gay Films of Ferzan Özpetek), editor of Pasolini’s Lasting Impressions: Death, Eros, and Literary Enterprise in the Opus of Pier Paolo Pasolini, and co-editor of Italian Americans on Screen: Challenging the Past, Re-Theorizing the Future. He is the President of the American Association of Teachers of Italian and Gamma Kappa Alpha, the Italian Collegiate National Honors Society.
Gregory Herman has been a member of the faculty of the Department of Architecture at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design since 1991. His current research is focused primarily on the work and legacy of the internationally renowned, Fayetteville-based architect Fay Jones, and he serves as the Director of the Fay and Gus Jones House Stewardship. A Teaching Academy Fellow, his past research has included inspections of Depression-era farm resettlement communities in Arkansas, and he has been involved with initiatives as diverse as post-Katrina reconstruction in New Orleans, Design-Build housing efforts in Fayetteville, and the development of design recommendations to revitalize historic Hot Springs, Arkansas. Having taught at all levels of the curriculum, he is currently teaching in the Second-Year Design Studio, and leads a seminar focused on Critical Regionalism and its manifestations in the Ozark region.
Jennifer Hoyer received hir PhD in Modern German Literature from the University of Minnesota in 2007, since which year she has been on the faculty at the University of Arkansas. She is an associate professor of German and the founder of the Jewish Studies program at the U of A. She has taught numerous courses on Holocaust writing and German Jewish writers. Hir research focuses on neurodivergent thinking and intersections of mathematics and poetry. Publications include the book The Space of Words (2014), about Nobel-Prize-winning Holocaust poet Nelly Sachs, and forthcoming work on neuroqueerness, math, and poetry.
Daniel Kennefick received his Ph. D. in Physics from Caltech in 1997 and since 2003 he has been on the faculty at the physics department of the University of Arkansas. He is the author of No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity from Princeton University Press. He was previously the author of a history of gravitational waves called Traveling at the Speed of Thought and the co-author of the An Einstein Encyclopedia, both also from Princeton. His research concentrates in three areas, gravitational waves, galactic structure and history of physics. Since 2000 he has helped to edit the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein for Princeton Press.
Toby Klein (she/her/hers) received her undergraduate honors degrees in Psychology and Jewish Studies from Indiana University in 2018. She completed her Masters of Science in Community Health Promotion in December of 2020 from the University of Arkansas, after completing research related to Jewish attitudes towards abortion. Toby is now continuing her academic career at the University of Arkansas as a Distinguished Doctoral Fellow, pursuing her PhD in Public Policy with a specialization in Social Justice. She recently completed a Glass Leadership Institute fellowship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and focuses her dissertation research on Holocaust education legislation in Arkansas.
Pieter Kohnstam was born in Amsterdam in 1936. His parents, Hans and Ruth Kohnstam, were forced to flee from the Nuremberg/Fuerth area in Germany to Amsterdam, The Netherlands during the early days of the Nazi regime. It was by chance that the Kohnstam’s apartment in Amsterdam was downstairs from the family of Anne Frank. Ruth became a close friend of Edith Frank, and Anne, the youngest daughter, became Pieter’s babysitter. Both children attended the local schools in the neighborhood. When Nazi persecution of Jews in The Netherlands became intolerable, the Franks went into hiding, but Pieter’s parents decided to flee Amsterdam. After a year-long trek through Belgium, France and Spain, they reached safety and freedom in Argentina. Pieter’s book was published in The Netherlands in February 2008 and in Germany in 2016.
Matthew H. Lee is director of research at the Association of Christian Schools International, an organization whose services reach over 5.5 million students in nearly 30,000 schools around the world. He received his Ph.D. in education policy here at the University of Arkansas, where he was one of the first recipients of the Chancellor’s Fund for Humanities and Performing Arts for his research on the civic effects of Holocaust education. His other research interests include school choice and religious liberty, the subject of a book he edited with Jason Bedrick and Jay P. Greene. He serves as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Angie Maxwell is the Director of the Diane Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society, holds the Diane D. Blair Endowed Chair in Southern Studies, and is an Associate Professor of political science at the University of Arkansas. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas, Austin and is the author of The Indicted South: Public Criticism, Southern Inferiority, and the Politics of Whiteness (University of North Carolina Press, 2014), which received the V. O. Key Award for Best Book in Southern Politics, and The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Richard Sonn has been on the History Department faculty since 1987, where he teaches French history and modern European social, cultural and intellectual history. He regularly teaches HIST 4203, The Holocaust. He received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book is due out soon, and is titled Modernist Diaspora: Immigrant Jewish Artists in Paris, 1900-1945. The last chapter deals with Jewish artists facing the Holocaust.