Graduate Student Accomplishments
Bass School graduate students have presented their research and creative work at a variety of national and international conferences and in multiple publications.
2020-2021
Kevin Zander Johnson, a PhD candidate in Humanities and Literature, is the recipient of the 2021 Glasstire North Texas Art Writing Prize. In his winning essay, titled Do the Right Thing: Mookie, Sal, and the Stories We Tell, Johnson writes about Spike Lee’s landmark motion picture, and the power of storytelling to help people gain a better understanding of others.
The $2,500 prize is designed to highlight emerging arts writers in Texas and includes publishing the winning essay on Glasstire’s website.
Johnson was born and raised in Arkansas, and he has lived and worked as a writer and university instructor in San Francisco, Taipei, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Dallas. He has studied in MFA programs at Saint Mary’s College of California and the University of Memphis.
2019-2020
Sarah Snyder, a PhD candidate in History of Ideas, is writing her dissertation entitled “The Historical Complexities of Time Constructs in Relation to the Term ‘Post-Holocaust’” in which she is analyzing various forms of Holocaust literature and how time is presented in each. More specifically, she is comparing the presentation of time and trauma in multi-generational memoirs, multi-generational testimonials, letters written from 1933 onward, and diaries of Holocaust victims and survivors. She is a member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars Conference Committee and Emerging Scholars Board and fills the position of liaison to the executive board for organizing its international conference to be held in Barcelona. Most recently, she attended Bergen-Belsen’s International Summer Workshop in which the final project will be published through the museum. She is currently working on a Jewish cemetery restoration project with an organization in Moldova. This endeavor originated from a memoir she authored for a Holocaust survivor. In January 2020, Sarah attended the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. She is also a 2019 Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellow and a recipient of the Mala and Adolph Einspruch Fellowship for Holocaust Studies.
Cynthia Seton-Rodgers, a PhD candidate in History of Ideas who previously received her master’s degree and Certificate in Holocaust Studies from UT Dallas, is in the process of preparing for her PhD field exams in Holocaust literature, the history of antisemitism, and early modern European history. Once completed, she plans to conduct dissertation research into the Sephardic Diaspora with a particular focus on crypto-Jews.
She was elected president of the board of directors in 2020 by the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies, a multidisciplinary academic association that fosters research regarding the historical and contemporary developments involving crypto-Jews of Spanish and/or Portuguese origins and other hidden Jewish communities around the world. In July 2020, she attended the Baylor University Institute of Oral History online workshop thanks to a research microgrant from the Ackerman Center.
Sarah Hashmi is a PhD student in Literary Studies who specializes in memoirs, fictional representations of war, genocide, and the Holocaust in literature and popular culture, propaganda, Antisemitism, racism, and post-Colonial literature and media. This past year, she worked as a graduate research assistant for the Ackerman Center and was a recipient of the Selwin Belofsky Fellowship in Holocaust Studies. Hashmi also participated in the ongoing collaborative initiative, “Confronting the Past,” an interactive citizen history project that explores, documents, and curates the history of hate and racial/ethnic violence in Dallas-Fort Worth. The interdisciplinary nature of this project has produced performances, exhibitions, and features an online and interactive platform for digital exhibition, discussion, and research.
Philip Barber, a PhD candidate in humanities, presented the paper “Bricks in the Road to Auschwitz: An Examination of the Influences and Precedents that Paved the Way to the Holocaust” at the 50th Annual Scholars’ Conference, where he also served as a panel chair and chaired a roundtable discussion. He also presented the paper “Confronting Genocide: The Fate of the Einsatzgruppen and the Myth of Justice” at the RAW Graduate Conference. Barber, a research assistant at The Ackerman Center, received a research microgrant to attend a virtual workshop with the Baylor University Institute of Oral History. He is also a recipient of the Mike Jacobs Fellowship in Holocaust Studies.
Daniel Dunham, a PhD student in History of Ideas, delivered conference papers on the tragic fate of Bulgaria’s Thracian and Macedonian Jews, the loss of the unique culture of Eastern Europe’s Shtetl Jews, themes of Jewish loss in Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, and the concept of unarmed Jewish resistance, known as Amidah, in answer to the oft asked question, “why didn’t the Jews resist?”
Dunham has also led the Collin College History Club in a discussion on the 2,000-year history of antisemitism. Dunham earned his BA in Historical Studies and an MA in the History of Ideas, both at UT Dallas. He is currently collaborating with the Tulsa Jewish Federation on their exhibit of the history of antisemitism
Jae Jerkins, a PhD student in History of Ideas, is a full-time professor at Tyler Junior College (TJC), where he teaches Philosophy, Ethics, Humanities, and Religion. He was recently named the 2020 Thomas J. Shelby Jr. Endowed Chair for Teaching Excellence by TJC. He also serves as the Professor of Islam at the University of Texas at Tyler. He takes part in several interfaith initiatives in East Texas, having just completed his tenure as President of the Board of Congregation Beth El (the 130-year-old Reform synagogue of East Texas). Recently, he was invited to publish a chapter in The Philosophy of Forgiveness, Vol. III for Vernon Press on the philosophical concept of forgiveness in Judaism from its beginnings in the Torah to its treatment after the Holocaust. Jerkins is a 2020 recipient of the Holocaust Studies Certificate. His research interests include interfaith dialogue, colonial discourse, time, representation, and the philosophy of religion.
Shannon Quigley, a PhD student in History of Ideas, focuses her research on aspects of the German churches in the Nazi era in connection to the Holocaust and post-Shoah reconciliation efforts between Jews and Christians. A research assistant at the Ackerman Center, she participated at the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature’s annual meeting in November 2019, the American Society of Church History’s annual meeting in January 2020, and at the 50th Annual Scholar’s Conference at UT Dallas in March 2020. She also virtually participated in the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy’s 2020 Oxford Summer Institute for Curriculum Development in Critical Antisemitism Studies.
Philip Barber, a PhD candidate in humanities, presented the paper “The Role of Memoirs in Histories of the Holocaust” at the 49th Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches held March 2019 at The University of Texas at Dallas. He is a research assistant at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies.
2018-2019
Claire Soares, a PhD candidate in Aesthetic presented the paper “Van Meegeren’s Vermeer and a Buyer Called Goring” at the 11th Congress of the European Association of Jewish Studies in Krakow, Poland. She is an award-winning filmmaker, engineer and author who applies her knowledge of engineering forensics to case of art masterpieces that may be forgeries.