Meagan Smith completed her PhD in Comparative and World Literature in 2022. Her dissertation, titled Science Fiction at the Border, examines representations of walled spaces in 20th and 21st century utopian and dystopian science fiction from Russia, Cuba, Mexico, the US and Canada. Her...
Alumni Spotlight
Claire Baytas graduated with a PhD in Comparative Literature, a Graduate Student Certificate from the Program in Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies, and a Graduate Minor in Cinema Studies in May 2023. While a PhD student, Claire’s research focused on representations of memory and history in...
Diana Sacilowski earned her Ph.D. in Slavic Languages & Literatures, along with graduate certificates in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies and Criticism and Interpretive Theory, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2021. She is now a Senior Lecturer in the Department of...
Leah Wilks is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher currently based out of Brooklyn, NY (Munsee Lenape and Canarsie land) and originally from Durham, NC (Eno, Lumbee, Shakori, Sissapahaw, and the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation land). At times, she is also a gardener, an elder-care companion, a...
Ofira earned her PhD in sociocultural anthropology with a graduate certificate in Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation, titled, “Scaling Down Judaism: The Politics of Tradition and Change among Liberal Observant Jews in Israel,” traces the...
Helen Makhdoumian is a Promise Armenian Institute Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, where, under the mentorship of Professor Michael Rothberg of the Department of Comparative Literature, she is working on her book manuscript tentatively titled “A Map of This Place:...
Ellie Spitz graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with Highest Honors in Human Development and Family Studies and dual minors in Sociology and Jewish Culture and Society in 2011. They then graduated from Washington University in St Louis as a Master of Social Work, where they...
Joshua Kravitz received his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science with a undergraduate minor in Jewish Culture and Society here at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He has always been interested in Jewish studies, especially after completing a semester abroad in 2019 at Tel Aviv...
Ethan Madarieta received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with a graduate minor in Latina/Latino Studies and certificate in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies. His dissertation, “The Practice of Memory: Decolonial Resistance in Indigenous Chile and the Chilean Diaspora,” is a study of...
HGMS is delighted to announce that Comparative Literature and HGMS graduate student Alexandra van Doren defended her dissertation on April 30 and was hooded as an Illini Ph.D. on 11 May 2019. Her dissertation, which she will deposit in August, ‘“Where foot knocks against/the unburied bones of kin...
Joshua Altshuler graduated from the University of Illinois with a BA in History and a minor in Jewish Studies. He won the Filler Award in 2016. Currently, Joshua is an Education Fellow for the Institute of Southern...
Classics and Jewish Studies major, Aria Tsoulouhas, graduated from the University of Illinois is the spring of 2018. Aria was a winner of the Filler Award in 2017. She will be attending Yale Divinity School this fall...
Jewish Studies minor, Payton Heyen, graduated from the University of Illinois in the spring of 2018 with a BA in History. She was a winner of the Filler Award in 2017. Payton is currently at Washington University...
Elana Jakel is Program Manager of the Initiative for the Study of Ukrainian Jewry at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). She received her doctorate in Russian and Soviet History from the University of...
Jessica Young is currently an Assistant Professor of Global English at New College of Florida. Her dissertation, “Migrating Memories: Power and Transcultural Memory in Contemporary South Asian Fiction,” traces the visible and invisible modes of memory transmission across national and cultural...
Hapsatou Wane is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Southern University-Armstrong Campus in the Department of Literature. Her research centers on Francophone and Anglophone African and Afro-Brazilian literature,...
Priscilla Charrat Nelson is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of French and Arabic at Bradley University. She obtained her PhD in French Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in August 2017, where she defended her dissertation "Documents et Cheminements: Tracing the...
Dmitry Tartakovsky completed his PhD in history in 2009. After working as Attaché/Vice Consul for the State Department, Balkans analyst for Army Special Forces, and the UIUC Library’s Slavic Reference Service, he is currently Managing Editor for the Slavic Review.
Andrew Demshuk's research focuses on post-1945 German and Polish history. His first monograph, "The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945-1970" (Cambridge University Press, 2012) examines how, amid the charged political context of the early Cold War,...
Jovana Babovic is an affiliated scholar at the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. She holds a PhD from the Department of History at Illinois, with expertise in East European, Russia, and comparative urban history. She earned MA degrees from ...
