Current Students
Jewish Studies Cluster Students
Asher Gladstone
ashergladstone2030@u.northwestern.edu
Asher is a PhD student in the History Department. He studies early modern Jewish history with a particular focus on Christian Hebraism as a site of intellectual and cultural exchange between Jews and Christians. His research has examined collaboration between rabbis and Christian scholars as well as Christian perceptions of Jewish law and custom in early modern Europe.
Anna is a PhD student in the History Department. She holds a B.A. in British and American Studies with a minor in History from Bielefeld University and an M.A. in History from Missouri State University. Her M.A. thesis examined acts of revenge and revenge fantasies of Jewish Holocaust survivors in postwar Vienna. She is interested in researching the history of the Holocaust in Austria and Jewish history in Austria after the Second World War with a specific emphasis on Vienna.
Anastasiia Simferovska is an ABD in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. In her dissertation, tentatively entitled “The Holocaust Text in Eastern Europe: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Making of an Eyewitness,” Anastasiia explores intertextuality and image migration within Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian artistic and literary Holocaust texts in the first decades after WWII. In her research, Anastasiia brings together art history, literary criticism, historical analysis, and cultural archeology. Anastasiia also holds a PhD in Art History and an MA in Fine Arts and Preservation of Artwork from Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine. Anastasiia was the Crown Graduate Fellow in 2022-2023.
Aviva Waldman
avivawaldman2030@u.northwestern.edu
Aviva Waldman is a first year student in the English department. She is interested in twentieth century American Jewish literature, orientations toward nationalism, and American Yiddish culture. . She holds a BA and MA from the University of Chicago.
Anastasiya is a doctoral student specializing in Eastern Europe's history in the first half of the twentieth century. Her research primarily focuses on the intersection of gender and Eastern European far-right nationalist regimes. She is a member of the Jewish Studies Cluster program. Anastasiya holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College.
Savoy Curry
SavoyCurry2025@u.northwestern.edu
Savoy Curry is a doctoral candidate at the history department under the supervision of Prof. Dyan Elliott and Prof. David Shyovitz. She is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at Hebrew University, working on the project, “ Contending with Crises: Jews in 14th Century Europe,” led by Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten. Savoy’s doctoral project addresses the criminalization of sexual behavior in the late 14th to early 15th centuries, with a specific focus on sexual relationships between Jews and Christians. The dissertation questions how factors of class, gender, and religious identity impacted criminalization at a local level. Savoy holds an Honors BA in History and Medieval Studies from SUNY Binghamton, and an MA in History from Northwestern. She was a 2022-2023 recipient of the Leo Baeck Fellowship Program and is currently the 2024-2025 recipient of the Crown Graduate Fellowship.
Danylo Leshchyshyn is a 2nd-year History PhD student focusing on modern Ukrainian and East European history. He is particularly interested in interethnic relations and relationships between different local nationalist movements. He has previously published on the development of narratives of apostolic succession in the Constantinopolitan, Ukrainian, and Russian Orthodox Churches from the Byzantine Empire to the Russo-Ukrainian War. Danylo has presented papers on the relationship between Galician Jewish politicians and the West Ukrainian People's Republic of 1918-1919, the conflicting narratives surrounding the 4th Rebbe of Belz's survival of the Shoah, as well as the wartime relationship between the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the 14th Waffen-SS "Galicia" Division during the Second World War. He has a BA in History and Political Science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and an MA in History from the University of Toronto.
Rebecca Turner
rebeccaturner2029@u.northwestern.edu
Rebecca Turner is a second-year PhD student in Theatre and Drama (IPTD). Her research focuses on Yiddish women dramatists with the goal to document, understand, and uplift their art. This includes work from marginalized genres such as children’s theatre and shund [trash] musicals as well as “high art” and political dramas. She holds a BA in English (Drama and Theatre) and Jewish Studies from McGill University.
Gabriel Ben-Jacob
gabrielbenjacob2028@u.northwestern.edu
Gabriel Ben-Jacob is a third-year PhD student in the History Department studying nineteenth-century American Jewish history. He is broadly interested in American Judaism, Jewish identity, the Reform movement, and Zionism. His research focuses on the rise of Jewish nationalism and the relationship between Jewish and Christian religious thought. Gabriel holds a BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania.
Sarah Marks Mininsohn
Sarah Marks Mininsohn is a PhD student in Interdisciplinary Theatre with a focus Jewish Studies and Critical Dance Studies. She researches histories of Jewish Italian migration and ghettoization through choreographic methods. This research was supported by a 2022-23 Fulbright Artist Grant, and she has presented her findings at Columbia College Chicago, University of Bologna, and Dance Studies Association. She holds an MFA in Dance from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she received a Humanities Research Institute Graduate Fellowship. She holds a BA in Dance and Sociology from Wesleyan University.
Brooklyn Hortenstine
bhortenstine@u.northwestern.edu
Brooklyn Hortenstine is a Ph.D. student in the History Department. She holds a BA in History from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, and a masters in Comparative History from Central European University in Vienna, Austria, where she was involved with the Jewish Studies program. Brooklyn is interested in the history of people with disabilities and Holocaust studies. She is currently researching the roles and survival tactics of disabled people under Nazism, as well as interactions between the Jewish community and the disabled at the time.
Noah Marcus
noahmarcus2027@u.northwestern.edu
Noah Marcus is an actor, dramaturg, and PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama (IPTD) program. He earned both his BA in Theatre and his MA in Theatre Theory and Dramaturgy from the University of Ottawa where he wrote his thesis on the performance of Jewish rituals in real life and their performance on the theatrical stage in The Dybbuk: Or Between Two Worlds. His ongoing PhD dissertation, "Performing and Interpreting Jewishness: Jewish Theatrical Representation in Canada and the United States, 1880-1930" examines, compares, and analyzes how Jewish performers created and portrayed 'Jewishness' on stage and in film in Montreal and New York City in the context of the early twentieth century, a time at which the concepts of Jewish-American and Jewish-Canadian identity were first formulating. His research interests include Jewish theatre, Jewish rituals, and the performance of Jewish identity. Noah co-coordinates the Jewish Studies Graduate Cluster at Northwestern and is also affiliated with the Critical Studies in Theatre and Performance Cluster."
Molly Schiffer
mollyschiffer2027@u.northwestern.edu
Molly Schiffer is a first-year PhD student in political science studying the relationship between Jewish-American political identity and American political development. In the past, she has completed work on the Jewish Labor Bund’s diasporic movement to lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, and the impact of the diaspora on Jewish-American political coalescence. Looking forward, she hopes to complete a project on the advocacy of contemporary left-wing Jewish organizations, and their normative appeals to American Jews on the basis of identity.
Arne Holverscheid
arneholverscheid2026@u.northwestern.edu
Arne Holverscheid is a first-year PhD student in the Political Science Department at Northwestern University. He is interested in political behavior and methodology, with a focus on political accountability, voting behavior and corruption. Arne also has an active interest in Israeli politics and, more generally, in comparative perspectives within political science. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Munich as well as an MSc in Social Research Methods from the London School of Economics. Before graduate school, he worked in financial crime prosecution and management consulting.
Liza Bernstein
lizasb2026@u.northwestern.edu
Liza Bernstein finished her first year of coursework while also spending the year focusing on the fourth chapter of the Talmud tractate Kiddushin. Bernstein has focused her research in this chapter on questions of lineage, masculinity, and hierarchical relationships in the Talmud. She hopes to continue this project as she begins her second year.
Emma Davis
EmmaDavis2025@u.northwestern.edu
Emma Davis is a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science. She is interested in modern Jewish political thought, international relations theory, and post-colonial thought. She received an MSt in Jewish Studies from Oxford University and BA in Political Science from Vassar College.
Mahmure Idil Ozkan
MahmureOzkan2023@u.northwestern.edu
Idil Ozhan is a linguistic anthropology doctoral student at Northwestern University. Her dissertation project investigates the 2015 citizenship offer of Spain to Sephardic Jews, exploring language ideologies, citizenship, transnational migration, and the understandings of homeland and belonging among Turkish Sephardic Jews. Having a BA in sociology from Bogazici University, and an MA in Cultural Studies from Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey, her MA thesis dealt with the affect and temporal politics of language loss. Idil worked as TA at the Department of Sociology at Istanbul Bilgi University (2014-17). As co-founder of YATOC (The Study Group on Jewish Communities) in Istanbul Bilgi University, she co-organized a number of roundtables and academic workshops on Jewish Studies in Turkey.
Ariel Weiner
arkweiner@gmail.com
Ariel Weiner is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literary Studies (CLS) with a home department in German, and holds a Mellon Fellowship in Jewish Studies, as well as a Doctoral Fellowship from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). She received an Honors B.A. in Classics and Religious Studies in 2015 from the University of King’s College in Halifax. Her areas of research include the work of Walter Benjamin, continental philosophy, media and communications theory, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and 20th century Jewish thought, particularly regarding questions of language, mediation, and perception.
