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Phyllis Lassner

Professor of Instruction Emerita in the Crown Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cook Family Writing Program at Northwestern University

Ph.D. Wayne State University

Phyllis Lassner is Professor Emerita in The Crown Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, Gender Studies, and Writing Program at Northwestern University.  She has published on interwar and World War II women writers, including two books on Elizabeth Bowen, British Women Writers of World War II, Colonial Strangers, Anglo-Jewish Women Writing the Holocaust, as well as essays on Holocaust representation in literature and film.  Her most recent book is Espionage and Exile: Fascism and Anti-Fascism in British Spy Fiction and Film (Edinburgh UP, 2017).  She was the recipient of the International Diamond Jubilee Fellowship at Southampton University, UK.  Her current research and publications concern Holocaust refugee writing, representations of intermarriage in Nazi Germany, post-Holocaust film comedy, and video adaptations of Holocaust memoirs. She co-edited, with Victoria Aarons,  The Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture.  She serves on the Exhibition and Education Committees of the Illinois Holocaust Museum.

Jewish Studies Courses

  • English 105: Writing About Children and the Holocaust
  • English 205: Intermediate Writing about Children & Holocaust
  • Gender Studies 382:  Gender, Race, & the Holocaust
  • Jewish Studies 350: Representing the Holocaust in Literature and Film