I am the director of the Marymount Institute for Faith, Culture, and the Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, as well as associate professor of history, affiliated faculty in Jewish Studies, and director of the Secondary Teacher Preparation Program in Social Studies/History in LMU’s Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. I was educated at Georgetown University, with a Bachelor’s from the School of Foreign Service, a Master’s in German and European Studies, and a doctorate in History.
I am a social and cultural historian of modern Central Europe, with a focus on national identity, nationalist mobilization, and the experience of national conflict in the German-Polish borderlands. More recently, I have begun a project focused on the artist Max Thalmann. I received a Humanities Initiative grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a Public Uses of the Past Summer Institute for high school students; the first institute will take place in summer 2027.
I teach broadly in modern European and world history, including first-year seminars on the First World War and on the Holocaust; introductory surveys in world history, environmental history, and European history; and upper-division courses about modern Germany, European imperialism, gender history, popular culture, and public history. With my colleague Amy Woodson-Boulton, I received the 2018 Inclusive Excellence Upper-Division Course Transformation Award for transforming the History curriculum from LMU’s Intercultural Council. I received the 2022 President’s Fritz B. Burns Distinguished Teaching Award from LMU and a 2022 Teacher Eddy Award from the LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce. I previously taught at the University of Southern Mississippi and George Mason University.
I have served as chair (2017-2021) and associate chair (2016-2017) of the Department of History, as president of the LMU Faculty Senate (2015-2017, with an additional year on the Faculty Senate Executive, 2017-2018), and as chair of the BCLA College Council (2018-2020). In recognition of my service, I received the 2018 Popiden Distinguished Faculty Service Award from Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at LMU. I am a member of the team that founded and maintains the interdisciplinary digital project the German Studies Collaboratory, as well as co-founder and co-coordinator of the German Studies Association‘s Teaching Network. I also serve on the board of the Central European History Society.
