I am associate professor of history in the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. I am also the director of the Secondary Teacher Preparation Program in Social Studies/History and affiliate faculty with Jewish Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies. 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 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 am currently a faculty fellow in LMU’s Center for Teaching Excellence. 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.
