Ph.D., Antioch University, 2024, Leadership and Change

Anne Frank is linked to her contemporaries in about 80% of 18 English-language published and produced plays. The remaining plays pair Frank and African American icons Harriet Tubman, Emmett Till, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Research on dramatic literature with Frank as a character, the writing of plays linking her with African American personages, or history, analysis, or comparison of the process of multiple plays about Frank does not exist. A few articles extant compare the Goodrich and Hackett play with the Kesselman rewrite, a dissertation on five plays about Frank (those five plays are in the 80% mentioned earlier). The central question of this dissertation is why the playwrights of Harriet and Anne: An Original Narrative, Janet Langhart Cohen's Anne & Emmett: A One-Act Play, and Letters from Anne and Martin unite Anne Frank and African American historical figures. What were the playwrights' intentions with this linkage, and how were they fulfilled? This dissertation intends to fill this research gap in theatre history. The playwrights were interviewed using a prepared questionnaire completed by mail, email, telephone, or Zoom to discover the reason(s) for writing the three works. The writers answered using their preferred methods, and results were compiled within the work's question/answer format. Articles and the playwrights' websites were mined for additional historical data about the works and writers. The research found the plays to be works of remembrance/cultural trauma written by playwrights who shared seminal experiences regarding Anne Frank and the African American icons. The writers were driven by intense feelings of social justice, inspiring their creative works. These playwrights used Anne Frank, Harriet Tubman, Emmett Till, and Martin Luther King Jr. to communicate their thematic messages of social justice. They urged their audiences to keep these icons' history from repeating itself and honor those entities. This dissertation is available in open (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, German

Reparations and victim reconciliation have become a popular topic in the 21st century. In the fight for apologies, compensation, and corrections for human injustices, civil society actors play a necessary role in varied facets. Through qualitative research and case study comparison, I seek to investigate the questions: How did civil society organizations fight for successful reparations from the German government? Which factors lead to a successful or satisfactory outcome, and which to failure? By using Germany as the common perpetrator and respondent among the reparations claims, the study contrasts the experience and success of civil societies in their push for financial indemnifications and reconciliation. My focus is on the Jews following the Holocaust, the Ovaherero and Nama peoples for the Namibian Genocide, and the Roma and Sinti after the Porajmos. My research found that successful victim mobilization through civil society organizations relies on a combination of factors, including support from the diaspora, government connections, international support, and solidarity among civil society organizations. Additionally, this thesis finds that the advent of the internet has become widely beneficial to victims as they organize and mobilize efforts for transitive justice.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, History

This dissertation examines the rehabilitation and education of Polish Jewish children after the Holocaust. It argues that schools, summer camps, and children's homes in Poland were national and international sites for the rehabilitation of child survivors; therefore, they served as laboratories and arenas for debates regarding Polish Jewry's future. By comparing Zionist and non-Zionist institutions of child care, I illustrate how educators and caregivers engaged with competing ideologies to create normalcy in the best interests of the children. Rehabilitation was not just physical or mental; it required Jewish children to develop skills that would make them independent and good citizens. What did they study? What did they read? Did they learn Yiddish or Hebrew in school? Did they speak Polish in the classroom? The answers to these questions have broader implications regarding the reconstruction of Jewish communities in Poland after the Holocaust. While Jewish communists and Bundists in the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (Centralny Komitet Zydow w Polsce, CKZP) desperately fought to keep Jewish children in Poland, Zionist organizations saw no future for Jews in Poland. Through an analysis of correspondences, meeting minutes, educator conference programs, lesson plans, children's own writing, memoirs, and interviews gathered through multi-sited archival research, this dissertation exposes tension between organizations and traces how the educational and ideological goals of the CKZP Department of Education drastically evolved under the growing influence of Poland's communist government. Ultimately, studying education as a form of rehabilitation and nation-building enhances our understanding of the delicate nature of rebuilding Jewish life after war and genocide.

Bachelor of Arts, Walsh University, 2022, Honors

This thesis examines the process of genocide and mass atrocities in the 20th and 21st centuries. In particular, the author examines five cases of 20th century genocides (The Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, Cambodian Genocide, Rwandan Genocide, and the Srebrenica Genocide) that scholars and experts have determined to be genocides under the UN international legal definition of the crime. Through research, six key variables have been found to be common elements in and between the 20th century cases. Then, the thesis examines the 21st century cases of mass atrocities (Darfur Sudan, Xinjiang China, Northwestern Yemen, Rakhine Myanmar, and Tigray Ethiopia), most of which are still on-going. While all of them have potential factors of genocide, all are shown to be ambiguous as to their exact nature. This is because none of them have been designated by the international community to be genocides at the time of this writing. Thus, this study employs the fuzzy-set qualitative method of analysis in order to perform a comparative analysis between the 20th century cases of genocide and the 21st century cases of mass atrocities. Through comparison of the selected variables, the author shows how the 21st century cases align closely with the 20th century cases both with individual and total scores. The similar numbers between the various cases indicate that genocides are still occurring in the 21st century and the author notes the lessons learned that can be learned from the study.

Bachelor of Music, Capital University, 2022, Music

Theatre is an art form with the capacity to enact real change in our communities. Because of the wide array of topics theatre explores, it can help us to hold up a mirror to real life, critique and comment on proceedings within it, hold space for human emotion and therefore catharsis, and get viewers invested in a good story. This begs a responsibility for theatrical professionals to tie in aspects of community outreach to create a more enriching show, and harness the true power of this art form. In this project, I will be producing and directing Indecent, as well as creating opportunities for community outreach through talkbacks, service projects, and campus engagement opportunities. I will be creating a directorial concept, choosing actors, designing a rehearsal plan, finding costumes, set design elements, lighting, sound, and anything else needed to produce the show, all while organizing the opportunities for community engagement, complementary to the show's themes of LGBTQ+ rights and the history of Yiddish theatre. I have received permission also to conduct interviews and surveys of audience members directly after the show as well as check-ins to measure how the themes resonated with them, and later, how they have noticed them appear in their lives since, or any changes they have made. In the final paper in the execution semester, I will then explore these effects through the findings of this production and outreach components to demonstrate that theatre has the ability, and therefore responsibility to benefit others.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, History

This dissertation is a global microhistory of 15,000 Jewish refugees who found refuge in Shanghai from Nazi persecution. The Jewish refugees had chosen Shanghai out of necessity and convenience: It was one of the few places in the world in the late 1930s that did not require an entry visa owing to its “open port” status as established by Western Powers in the nineteenth century. Not until after the Second World War and Second Sino-Japanese War ended in 1945 did China reclaim full sovereignty over Shanghai. As part of national reunification efforts, the Chinese demonstrated anti-foreign sentiments to the point of compelling Jewish refugees to seek outside assistance, but not without difficulties beyond Jewish refugees' control. This dissertation explores the dynamics that hampered the Jewish refugees' ability to receive timely humanitarian aid and emigration assistance in the aftermath of Nazism. Specifically, it aims to show how Jews in Shanghai faced the multiple and overlapping forms of discrimination and the ways in which these forms compounded their sense of being unwanted. Told through memoirs, diaries, oral history interviews, correspondences found in organizational and states archives around the world, this story illustrates larger processes associated with the end of a war: the experience of liberation, the development of relief and rehabilitation policies, and the functioning of migration within the modern nation-state system. The dissertation applies insights from the vast scholarship on post-Second World War Europe's humanitarian and refugee crises to Shanghai. In doing so, it uses comparative and transnational approaches to suggest that the history of the Jewish refugees in Shanghai should be understood as a global history of the aftermath of the Second World War. From Europe to the China theater, the dissertation sheds light on the deep effects of Western imperialism and persistent Eurocentrism and antisemitism on humanitarian aid and immigration poli (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2020, Leadership and Change

This dissertation concerns how Jewish-Muslim and Israel-Palestine grassroots activism can persist in the face of threats to the safety, freedom, lives, or even simply the income and employment of those engaged in acts of sustained resistance. At the heart of the study are the experiences of participants in the Hashlamah Project, an inter-religious collaboration project, involving Jews and Muslims. Across chapters and even nations, chapters of this organization faced similar threats and found universally-applicable solutions emerging for confronting those threats and persisting in the face of them. This raised the question of whether revolutionaries and activists in general can persevere with such work in the face of this sort of menacing. The study found answers to this in determining what methods were most widely employed and which had the best results. The results of the study showed an array of widely-employed methods for navigating threats in high risk activism, and persevering with such work in the face of these threats. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu/.

Master of Arts in History, Youngstown State University, 2017, Department of Humanities

Beginning in the 1930s and ending in the 1950s, approximately one hundred and fifty European Jews came to Youngstown, Ohio in response to Nazi persecution. Many came to Youngstown because they had relatives already living in the area. These relatives connected Holocaust-era refugees to a new life in the United States. In the case of many displaced persons, who arrived after the end of the Second World War and the liberation of concentration camps, national and local social service agencies worked with members of the Youngstown Jewish community to facilitate their resettlement. Some stayed for a very short time and rebuilt their lives in other places in the United States. Some followed patterns similar to native residents of Youngstown. They stayed until economic conditions compelled them to leave the area. Others found remarkable success in Youngstown. They built businesses that employed others, established relationships within the community, and became another layer in the history of an area shaped by the cultures and experiences of the immigrants who came to call Youngstown home.

BA, Oberlin College, 2016, History

In 1960, during a resurgence of anti-Semitism, the Munich government initiated a program to invite Jewish former residents of Munich (who left during the 1930s and early 1940s due to the Nazis) back to their hometown for two-week visits. This program offered the participants a chance to reminisce about their childhoods, reconnect with their heritage, and visit their former communities. For the government, this program provided a crucial connection between the old prewar Munich and the new Munich of the 1960s, between Munich as the birthplace of National Socialism and Munich as a newly rebuilt city, ready to move forward from the Holocaust. This thesis relies primarily on correspondence between program participants and the Munich government from the Munich City Archive, oral interviews with individuals involved with the program, and secondary sources about postwar Munich and historical memory.

PHD, Kent State University, 2016, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This dissertation offers a feminist visual rhetorical analysis of Jewish women's Holocaust art. The project explores the art's use of visual rhetoric, specifically, the use of the topoi of amplification and synecdoche, to create arguments about women's Holocaust experiences. To that end, my study examines how professional female artists who are Holocaust survivors represent their experiences, memories, bodies, and selves. Relying on feminist rhetorical theory, Disability Studies, and visual rhetoric scholarship, this study positions the art as non-discursive narratives and examines the intersections between identity, the body, lived experience, and ethos. In so doing, the dissertation recognizes the body as a source of knowledge and privileges alternate voices and modes of meaning-making; thereby, this effort complicates the grand narrative of the Holocaust and our understanding of what it means to be a female survivor. The study focuses on themes of survival and resistance, and examines how metaphors of motherhood, community, and isolation function within the art. The project's theoretical basis is formed by Vizenor's concept of survivance (survival + resistance) and Och's and Capp's concept of the self as having a connection to one's past, recognition of the present, and hope for the future. The study argues that the women's self-representations reveal evidence of agency and self-determination and, thus, the creation of art becomes an act of resistance. The project honors the female Holocaust experience and examines the art in order to expand our understanding of the Holocaust. Applying visual rhetorical analysis to the art moves the field of rhetoric, as well as public perceptions of the Holocaust, away from the privileging of persuasive discourse, towards an inclusive, experience-based, feminist concept of survival and resistance.

MA, Kent State University, 2016, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

This thesis explores the process of memorialization and cultural interpretations of the Rafle du Vel d'Hiv, or Vel d'Hiv roundups, in Paris after 1945. During the postwar period, France faced the difficult task of reuniting a divided nation wounded from the humiliation of defeat in 1940 and the reality that many French citizens had willingly collaborated with the Germans. One event in particular, the Vel d'Hiv roundups, weighed heavy on the nation's conscience as French police willingly organized and implemented the deportation of 13,152 Jews from Paris in 1942. As a result, few scholarly works existed regarding the nation's role in such atrocities and instead the memory of the Second World War focused on the legacy of a united Resistance movement under Charles de Gaulle. This image of the war would stay intact until cultural changes in the 1960s prompted a re-evaluation of the nation's past. The subsequent trials for crimes against humanity of former Vichy officials and calls for public recognition of French complicity in these roundups on behalf of the Republic prompted a public discussion of what it meant to be "French" in light of these atrocities. Popular books and films that were released in the following decade picked up where these debates left off to ensure the lessons of the past were not forgotten. Focusing on the way these changes influenced the commemoration of the Vel d'Hiv roundups, this thesis argues that by bringing issues of collaboration to the forefront of French public discourse, the public debates and conflicts that arose throughout the postwar period regarding the memory of Vichy pushed the site of the Vel d'Hiv into the spotlight and prompted the memory of this event to play an integral role in the way France redefined its past and implemented policies of memorialization for the future.

MA, Kent State University, 2016, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

This project examines the evolution of Anne Frank's image among the American public throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and analyzes how this public perception was influenced by the theatrical interpretation of the diarist's story. Examining the theatrical interpretation of the story from its creation through the modern day reveals that the intentional manufacturing of Anne Frank's characterization specific to American audiences of the 1955 production significantly affected public understanding of the historical story and continues to complicate the public's relationship with the play's heroine. This evolving relationship has been highlighted particularly through analysis of the original script's creation, public reactions to the various incarnations of the script over time, comparisons between the major script adaptations, and case studies that demonstrate twenty-first century attitudes toward the play. By illustrating the influence of the 1955 dramatization of "The Diary of Anne Frank" on the American public's perception of the historical story, this research draws attention to the areas in which historicity was sacrificed for the sake of marketing the production and ultimately highlights the importance of the theatrical interpretation in shaping Anne Frank's iconic role in American culture.

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Creative Writing/Poetry

This thesis explores Polish emigration through poetry from the present of the third generation in terms of loss of familial patriarchs, loss of the Polish language as an American monolingual English speaker, and loss of ethnic group identity. That is, this thesis explores what it means for a Polish American to be foreign to oneself. The speaker of these poems, in order to connect with an identity larger than herself, tries to regain a sense of Polish national identity by speaking to the dead patriarchs of her family and meditating on their deaths. By doing so, she attempts to make some kind of sense of her grief and of her life. This thesis utilizes formal restlessness and the themes of language, prayer, memory, dream, nature, drink, and work to connect the speaker with the unseen world that is now absent to her in the physical, visible world in which she dwells.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2016, History (Arts and Sciences)

This thesis examines foreign men accused of homosexuality in Nazi Germany. Most scholarship has focused solely on German men accused of homosexuality. Court records from the General State Prosecutor's Office of the State Court of Berlin records show that foreign homosexual men were given lighter sentences than German men, especially given the context of the law and the punishments foreigners received for other crimes. This discrepancy is likely due to Nazi confusion about homosexuality, the foreign contribution to the German war effort, issues of gender, and because these men were not a part of any German government, military, or all-male organizations.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Spanish and Portuguese

Although much has been written on the social, economic and political causes of the Peruvian armed internal conflict (1980-2000) and the difficulty in determining who should be counted as a victim during the conflict, there is a lacuna of research that considers how the victims of the violence are represented and recognized within the dominant public sphere. My project seeks to address this gap in the literature on Peru through an analysis of two organizations dedicated to the victims and their families, the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (PTRC 2001-2003) and the National Association of the Family Members of the Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared in Peru, ANFASEP (1983-present). I draw from Judith Butler's recent works on recognition and the public sphere and Homi Bhabha's theories of performativity in order to assess how the PTRC and ANFASEP frame or represent the victims specifically along the lines of gender, the underlying assumptions that inform the frames used and the kind of recognition conferred to the victims as a result of that framing. I demonstrate how the PTRC fails to take up responsibly the voices and the experiences of the victims such that the victims of the violence are denied agency and presented in the public sphere on the basis of their passivity. Through the eschewal of narratives of victimization and an assertion of the humanity of their loved ones who were disappeared or murdered by the State, ANFASEP affirms the agency of its members as grieving mothers and wives who are actively engaged in battling for the recognition of their losses. My analysis focuses on narratives of the violence produced by the PTRC, including its Final Report, photographic installation and televised public hearings, in addition to ANFASEP's five bulletins published during and just after the conflict, their testimonio, ¿Hasta cuando tu silencio?, and their museum in Ayacucho, Museo de la Memoria de ANFASEP, Para que no se repita. In Chapter 1 I present a (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2015, History (Arts and Sciences)

This thesis examines how local newspapers in the French Occupation Zone of Germany between 1945 and 1949 reflected social change. The words of the press show that, starting in 1945, the Christian narrative was the lens through which `average' Germans conceived of their past and present, understanding the Nazi era as well as war guilt in religious terms. These local newspapers indicate that their respective communities made an early attempt to `come to terms with the past.' This phenomenon is explained by the destruction of World War II, varying Allied approaches to German reconstruction, and unique social conditions in the French Zone. The decline of ardent religiosity in German society between 1945 and 1949 was due mostly to increasing Cold War tensions as well as the return of stability and normality. As Christian rhetoric began to diminish in the local press, so did it in German society as it transitioned to post-Nazism.

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2014, History

This dissertation investigates the worldview of German frontline soldiers during the Eastern Front conflict of the Second World War. It argues that Nazi era propaganda's creation of a racial and ideological “Other” in the Soviet Union had a significant impact on the attitude of the military in the East. These ideological imaginations of the enemy were often transformed by the realities at the front through the experiences of common enlisted men. While the Nazis constructed a racially and politically charged image of the enemy to justify a war of conquest, the German soldiers fighting in the East developed their own views of an expanding imperial landscape. An identity transformation amongst German combatants took place during the Eastern Front campaign for many reasons, including the effects of Nazi dogma, a foreign environment and local populace, the strains of combat, changing war circumstances, and genocidal policies. This project utilizes the wartime writings of Hitler's ordinary men to provide a partial reconstruction of their mentality, revealing their beliefs, fears, and perceptions of the Soviet enemy.

MCP, University of Cincinnati, 2014, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Community Planning

The purpose of this study is to provide an analysis of the implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) and Performance Management (PM) techniques in a public planning department during a time of economic recovery and provide practical recommendations to increase the efficacy of implementation. Specifically, I asked: 1. Can Total Quality Management foster quality planning practices in the Louisville Metro Planning and Design Division? 2. Is Total Quality Management an appropriate management technique for planning agencies during a time of economic recovery? 3. Does the implementation of Performance Management techniques create a power differential that unintentionally gives more influence to the development community? 4. How can the process of TQM be improved in Louisville Metro's Division of Planning and Design? To answer these questions, I conducted an explanatory case study of the implementation of TQM and PM in a public planning division during a time of economic recovery, Louisville Metro Division of Planning and Design Services from 2011 to 2014. I used data gathered online and participant observation research as a former staff member of Louisville Metro Planning and Design Services from 2009-2013. I chose this time frame because the great recession exacerbated some of the intrinsic difficulties of implementation of TQM and PM in the public sector and specifically the field of planning. Additionally, because 2011 marked the initial phase of the application of TQM and PM in Louisville Metro, an extraordinary amount of data was available that permitted in-depth analysis. First hand knowledge as a former staff member gave insight into the Division of Planning and Design Services. The case study assessed the definition of customer, the definition of quality and success, and the outline of planning processes identified for improvement by the Performance Audit Team using research in the field of Urban Planning. Next, the vision, mission, goals, indicators and ta (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2013, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

According to philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, the modernist novel is the best literary form to exploit heteroglossia, or the coexistence of two or more voices within a text. It incorporates the speeches of the author, narrators, and characters, as well as languages that are indicative of social status, employment, epochs, and so on. In this essay, heteroglossia is applied to Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus to demonstrate that the comics medium is also a prime candidate for heteroglossic exploitation. Voice and dialect are examined in the first portion of the essay, including generational differences between the characters' language, the presence and depictions of foreign languages, and authorial voice. The second portion of the essay applies heteroglossia to the text's visual aspects to explore its illustrative polyphony. This essay established that Maus, as well as the comics medium as a whole, is capable of exploiting heteroglossia.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Dance Studies

This dissertation investigates Jewishness, radicalism, and modernism, and the interplay and connections among these ideas, in selected dances by Anna Sokolow (1910-2000) between 1927-1961. As an American choreographer of Russian Jewish heritage known for her leftist leadership and socially conscious dances, whose early work was highly representational of working-class and Jewish identity, Sokolow could have been labeled as “ethnic” low art. Instead, she came to be embraced by influential mainstream dance critics, such as John Martin, Walter Terry, Louis Horst, and Doris Hering. I ask how Sokolow's work came to be regarded as “modernist,” thus transcending racial and class markers to become “American” in the 1950s, and I analyze the change over time in how her work was regarded. I examine Sokolow's work within the historical arc of 20th-century concert dance while using it as a point of departure for important discussions in 20th- and 21st-century dance, Jewish, and gender studies. I show that all of Sokolow's work—not solely those dances labeled Jewish by critics and historians—was informed by her heritage, and is, in effect, Jewish. I argue that Sokolow intended to respond to the political zeitgeist through her choreography; her Jewishness and her politics were contingent upon one another. Finally, I demonstrate how the development of Sokolow's choreographic aesthetic and the change in the way U.S. critics reviewed her work in the 1930s-1960s, from being integral to the workers movement, to making dances with overtly Jewish themes during the Holocaust, to reflecting postwar alienation, to directly addressing the Holocaust's atrocities during the Cold War, reflects the assimilation of her generation of Jews into American society. I frame this study within discourses of radicalism, modernism, Jewishness, race, gender, representation and the body, identity politics, and performativity. I use these ideas as lenses through which to conduct a textual analysis of Sokolow (open full item for complete abstract)