In May 2024, I earned my PhD in musicology from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music for my dissertation, entitled "Writing Music After the Holocaust: Survivor Identity and Memory in the Works of Polish Jewish Composers.” I analyzed how a group of Polish-Jewish émigré composers who survived the Holocaust used music to engage with the war and its memory in Europe between 1949 and 1964.

Employing archival sources from Poland, France, and the United States and drawing on methodologies from musicology and Jewish, memory, Holocaust, and literary studies, I examine several compositions in their cultural and historical contexts. For example, some émigré composers used their music to draw attention to Polish Jewish history at a time when Poland’s approach to wartime suffering largely excluded Jewish experience. Other composers were discouraged by continued antisemitism in France, but they countered these attitudes by turning to Jewish universalism to claim national belonging. I concluded that composers used music to engage with political discourses at the intersection of identity, nationhood, religion, and aesthetics, asserting their place within Europe and negotiating their individual and collective sense of belonging. I am currently working on expanding the project into a book.

In addition to working on revising my dissertation, I have had the pleasure of teaching several courses in Jewish history, identity, and music for the Borns Jewish Studies Program. I newly designed some of these, and it has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me thus far. I especially appreciate the opportunity to connect and work closely with the BJSP’s students—all of whom are absolutely wonderful. Their enthusiasm, curiosity, and readiness to engage with every task and reading I assign continuously inspire me. I prioritize discussions in my courses because I believe they provide students with the best opportunity to engage deeply with the material and connect it to their own experiences. This approach has led to meaningful conversations, particularly in the wake of October 7, when many students were grappling with complex questions surrounding Jewish identity. By learning with and from my students, I, too, have grown both as a teacher and as a scholar. My students’ insights and reflections challenge me to continuously refine my approaches, and I am looking forward to seeing where this leads as we wrap up the academic year.