2011 Echoes and Reflections Professors’ Study Tour
Participant Profiles
Gatsinzi Basaninyenzi
Gatsinzi is Associate Professor of English at Alabama A&M University where he teaches African American Literature and Literary Criticism. Since 1994, when the genocide against the Tutsis of Rwanda claimed a number of his relatives’ lives, he has taken interest in genocide scholarship and education. In 2006, Dr. Basaninyenzi contributed a chapter on the colonial roots of the genocide against Tutsis to Race and the Foundations of Knowledge, which was published by the University of Illinois Press. In 2008, he attended a summer seminar on Holocaust education and prevention. The seminar was sponsored by the Memorial Library, founded by Olga Lengyel, an Auschwitz survivor who died in 2001. Gatsinzi is a member of the Holocaust Educators Network and the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
As a United Nations volunteer in 2006 and 2007, he taught at the National University of Rwanda, which had lost a large number of its Tutsi faculty to genocide.
Dr. Basaninyenzi did his undergraduate studies at the National University of Zaire (now Congo) and his graduate studies at the University of Oregon and the University of Iowa, where he earned his Ph.D.
Melissa Cohen
Melissa is the Program Coordinator at the Martin-Springer Institute (MSI), part of the College of Arts and Letters at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. MSI, founded by Holocaust survivor Doris Martin and her husband Ralph Martin, strives to apply the lessons of the Holocaust to help promote moral courage, tolerance, and altruism.
In that capacity, Melissa plans general and advanced Holocaust education professional development conferences for educators and preservice teachers, as well as a wide range of other events relating to the mission of the Institute. Program topics range from bullying prevention and immigration rights to the environment and social justice. She has attended the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Arthur and Rochelle Belfer National Conference for Educators, and has participated in planning regional Belfer First Step and Belfer Next Step programs. Melissa has also attended Yad Vashem’s International Conference on Holocaust Education and Remembrance.
Daniel F. Davis
Dan is Clinical Assistant Professor in Education at Boston University’s School of Education, responsible for teacher training in history and social science education. Dr. Davis teaches Curriculum and Special Methods for History and Social Science. His area of professional interest is in the development of concept formation, critical thinking, electronic portfolios, and the art of questioning as they relate to the teaching of history and social science in middle and secondary schools. Dan worked in the field of secondary education for thirty years as a social studies teacher, department chair, and principal.
Dr. Davis co-authored The United States Since 1945, An Unfinished Journey and A History of the World. He also served as co-director of the Harvard Project on East Asian Studies in Education. He received an NEH Fellowship for an independent study of Harris Wofford: Pragmatic Idealism and the Art of the Possible. He was Project Coordinator of “The American Covenant: The Moral Uses of Power,” sponsored by the NEH and the National Humanities Faculty. Dr. Davis was also awarded numerous Horace Mann Grants from the Massachusetts Department of Education. He holds degrees from State University of New York, Oswego; City University of New York, Brooklyn College; and a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.
Todd Dinkelman
Todd is an Associate Professor in the Department of Elementary and Social Studies Education at the University of Georgia. At UGA, Dr. Dinkelman also serves as coordinator of the Social Studies Education Program and provides leadership for an extensive, ongoing teacher education program reform initiative. His research interests include self-study of teacher education practices and social studies teacher education, especially at the preservice level. His teaching contributions are primarily in graduate-level social studies methods, curriculum, and research courses.
Dr. Dinkelman has served on both the CUFA Executive Board and Editorial Board of Theory and Research in Social Education. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, including work that appeared in the Journal of Teacher Education, Theory and Research in Social Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, and Studying Teacher Education.
Miriam Fuchs
Miriam is a Professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i, where she is also co-editor of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly and Vice President of the Biographical Research Center. Dr. Fuchs publishes in life writing, modernism, and American literature. She co-edited with Craig Howes the MLA volume Teaching Life Writing Texts and, with Cynthia Franklin, the Biography special issue Life Writing & Translations and “Shifting Ground: Translating Lives and Life Writing in Hawai‘i.”
Miriam is the author of The Text Is Myself: Women’s Life Writing and Catastrophe (Wisconsin), which includes a chapter on Grete Weil, a survivor of Nazi persecution. Miriam also edited Marguerite Young, Our Darling: Tributes and Essays (Dalkey), and co-edited with Ellen Friedman Breaking the Sequence: Experimental Women Writers (Princeton). Her essays have appeared in journals and in chapters such as In Recognition of William Gaddis, Redefining Autobiography in 20th Century Autobiographical Fiction by Women, Critical Essays on American Modernism, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, boundary 2, Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production, and Shofar.
Miriam participated in the 2007 Jack and Anita Hess Seminar on Literature and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Holocaust Museum, and now teaches Holocaust Life Writing at her university.
Patrice Preston Grimes
Patrice is an Assistant Professor in Social Studies Education at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education. Dr. Grimes teaches courses in social studies methods, social foundations, and graduate research. She has conducted professional development workshops, is a nationally recognized presenter, and has consulted for several Teaching American History (TAH) grant programs in VA school districts.
Dr. Grimes has researched the civic education of youth, the history of African American public schooling, and the social and cultural contexts of teaching and learning. Her work has appeared in Theory and Research in Social Education, Teacher Education Quarterly, Social Studies Research and Practice,and Social Education. In 2007, she received the Exemplary Research in Social Studies Award from the National Council for the Social Studies.
Prior to coming to UVa, Patrice was a middle grades language arts and social studies teacher in the Atlanta and DeKalb County (GA) public school systems. She also was a course instructor and student teaching supervisor at Mercer University (GA). Dr. Grimes earned her Bachelor of Science in Speech degree from Northwestern University. She has a Masters of Arts in Teaching degree and a Ph.D. in Educational Studies from Emory University.
Thomas C. Hammond
Tom is an Assistant Professor in the Teaching, Learning, and Technology program at Lehigh University's College of Education. Dr. Hammond teaches elementary, middle, and secondary social studies methods courses as well as classes in technology integration and research methods. His research interest is technology-mediated social studies instruction. During his doctoral studies at the University of Virginia, he was a developer of PrimaryAccess, an online digital documentary editor designed for use in social studies classrooms.
Dr. Hammond has published research and practitioner pieces as well as book chapters on history, civics, and geography education. His current projects include using GPS (global positioning system) to teach latitude and longitude and conduct geospatial inquiry in the local community, integrating GIS (geospatial information system) into history instruction, and using Wikipedia to teach historical thinking.
Richard I. Jobs
Richard is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Pacific University in Oregon. He teaches broadly in Modern European History while his research has focused on youth and young people in post-war Europe. His recent publications include Riding the New Wave: Youth and Rejuvenation of France after the Second World War (Stanford, 2007) and a 2009 article in the American Historical Review, “Youth Movements: Travel, Protest, and Europe in 1968.”
Dr. Jobs is the recipient of numerous awards, honors, and fellowships in support of his research and teaching including the Outstanding Academic Title from Choice for his book, the William Koren Jr. Prize for the best article in French history, the Arnold and Lois Graves Award in the Humanities, and a Bourse Chateaubriand from the French government. Professor Jobs completed his Ph.D. in 2002 from Rutgers University.
Jeraldine R. Kraver
Jeraldine is Professor of English and Director of English Education at the University of Northern Colorado. She comes to Holocaust education via a circuitous route. While studying Foreign Service at Georgetown University, she quickly realized that she lacked a diplomatic temperament and declared a major in Theology. On graduating, she was recruited by Merrill Lynch, but after six years in the corporate sector, the dissonance between the marketplace mentality and the notions of social justice she embraced at Georgetown grated. She chose to pursue a Ph.D. in English.
As an English professor, Dr. Kraver’s interests in Jewish literature inspired her work on Jewish women writers as well as two book-length studies of the conflicted Benjamin Disraeli. She also served as “scholar leader” in a nation-wide ALA program on Jewish fiction. As a teacher-educator, Jeri advocates an activist teaching agenda that recalls her undergraduate engagement with social justice. These notions inform her commitment to Holocaust education, which was inspired by her participation on Greeley’s Holocaust Memorial Observance Committee and furthered after her attendance at a workshop for teacher educators at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Jeri’s eclectic work in literary study and education has appeared in such journals as Studies in American Jewish Literature, a/b: Auto/biography Studies, Literature, Interpretation, & Theory, The CEA Critic, The South Atlantic Review, English Journal, English Education, and Pedagogy.
David H. Lindquist
David is an Associate Professor in the College of Education and Public Policy at Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW), where he also coordinates the undergraduate secondary education program and serves as co-director of the campus’s Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He received his Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from Indiana University–Bloomington; his dissertation focused on the teaching practices of nationally recognized Holocaust educators.
Dr. Lindquist was the chair of the social studies department at R. Nelson Snider High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, before joining the IPFW faculty in 2004. While at Snider, he was named a Distinguished Teacher by the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a Museum Teacher Fellow and Regional Museum Educator for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and has participated in the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors’ study program to Poland and Israel. He has also been involved in teacher collaboration projects involving Latvian and Polish educators.
David has published in such journals as Social Education, The Social Studies, Middle School Journal, the Journal of Social Studies Research, Educational Studies, Clearing House, and American Secondary Education. His writing focuses on Holocaust pedagogy, and he is also interested in the political dynamics of K-12 education, textbook usage in secondary social studies teaching, and general issues involving teacher education.
Edmundo F. Litton
Edmundo, an immigrant from the Philippines, is a Professor in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University. He is the Chair of the Department of Specialized Programs in Urban Education. Dr. Litton is primarily responsible for administering the LMU programs for Teach For America (Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area) and various teaching credential programs for Catholic school educators.
Dr. Litton has graduate degrees in Bilingual Education, International and Multicultural Education, and Educational Technology from Georgetown University and the University of San Francisco. He conducts research on teacher education, cultural diversity, and educational technology, and the education of Filipino Americans. At LMU, Edmundo teaches courses on Cultural Diversity, Language Learning, Education Research, and Educational Technology.
Anand R. Marri
Anand is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He teaches courses on civic education, economics education, teacher education, and social studies education and research. Dr. Marri’s research examines the ways in which urban students can be better educated for active citizenship. In addition to authoring several chapters, his work has appeared in journals such as Action in Teacher Education, Social Education, The Social Studies, Teachers College Record, Urban Education, and Urban Review. He serves on several journal editorial boards.
Professor Marri has received over $4.2 million in grants for research and training from organizations such as Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. Prior to obtaining his doctoral degree, Dr. Marri, a native of India, taught high school social studies in San Jose and Santa Clara, California. He received his Bachelor's degree in government and legal studies from Bowdoin College, his M.A. degree in education from Stanford University, and Ph.D. degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Merry M. Merryfield
Merry is Professor of social studies and global education at The Ohio State University. Dr. Merryfield began her career as a social studies teacher in Atlanta and joined the Peace Corps in the late 70s and taught in Sierra Leone for two years. She is interested in the role of social studies in development. Over the last twenty-five years she has studied how teachers make decisions as they teach about the world in Kenya, Nigeria, Botswana, Malawi, Indonesia, China, Canada, and the U.S. In 1997, she began teaching online courses to teachers across the U.S. and world and has looked at how cross-cultural online interaction affects teachers’ knowledge and motivation to teach global issues and diverse cultures. Currently she is involved in a cross-national study of global citizenship education.
Dr. Merryfield coordinates a graduate program in social studies and global education and teaches courses in African studies, global and multicultural education, social studies, and experiential cross-cultural learning. In 2009, she won the James M. Becker Award for Global Understanding which is presented annually by the National Council for the Social Studies for achievement in working with educators in global education, and she was presented with the Global Scholar Award, which is given by the International Assembly of NCSS for research and scholarship in global education. See http://people.ehe.ohio-state.edu/mmerryfield/ for publications.
Dina H. Portnoy
Since 2005, Dina has been the director of the Urban Teacher Program at GSE/UPenn for Teach For America (TFA) teachers. She spent twenty-four years teaching in the School District of Philadelphia, primarily as an English teacher at three comprehensive high schools. She has been a member of the Philadelphia and National Writing Project since 1987, and that connection to the network and ideas of the Writing Project has fueled her passion to support writing in urban classrooms.
In the 1990’s, Dr. Portnoy spent three years working with the Philadelphia Schools Collaborative in an effort to restructure and reform the twenty-two comprehensive high schools in Philadelphia by creating small schools-within-schools and inviting teachers to work together to design programs, curricula, and assessments. This work prompted her dissertation on issues of control in a restructuring urban high school.
Dr. Portnoy is intent on building a program that supports TFA corps members as teachers in their classrooms and as active participants in creating more equitable educational opportunities for all American young people. Believing that teaching and learning require not only content and pedagogical knowledge and expertise but building and sustaining relationships, she also concentrates on building a network to support new teachers in urban settings
Caroline C. Sheffield
Caroline is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education in the Department of Middle and Secondary Education at the University of Louisville. A former middle school teacher, Dr. Sheffield teaches classes in social studies methods for both secondary and elementary preservice teachers, a student teaching seminar, and a graduate course on the role of museums in social studies education. Her research interests include technology integration in the social studies classroom, 21st century literacy in social studies education, and gifted education in the social studies.
Simone Schweber
Simone is the Goodman Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Schweber’s research has focused on teaching and learning about the Holocaust in public and private U.S. schools. She has investigated these issues in public high schools, a Lubavitch girls' yeshivah, a charismatic evangelical, fundamentalist Christian middle school, and a third grade classroom.
Dr. Schweber is author of two books: Making Sense of the Holocaust: Lessons from Classroom Practice, and (with Debbie Findling) Teaching the Holocaust (a guide for teachers in Jewish schools). Currently, she is interested in the teaching of the Holocaust in liberal Islamic schools.
