Jennifer Thompson, Ph.D., Director, Jewish Studies Program
Director, Jewish Studies Program
Co-Director, Ethics Minor
Maurice Amado Professor of Applied Jewish Ethics and Civic Engagement
Ph.D., Ethics and Society, Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University, 2010
M.T.S., Christianity and Culture, Harvard Divinity School, 2000.
B.A., English and American Literature, Brandeis University, 1998.
Dr. Thompson’s research uses ethnography to investigate the cultural and moral categories that contemporary American Jews use to organize their individual and collective lives. Her first book, Jewish on Their Own Terms: How Intermarried Couples are Changing American Judaism (Rutgers University Press) examined the gap between discourses about intermarriage and the lived experiences of intermarried Jews. More recently, together with philosopher Allison B. Wolf, she co-edited Applied Jewish Ethics: Beyond the Rabbinic Tradition (Lexington Books) and co-established the book series New Directions in Applied Jewish Ethics.
Dr. Thompson’s work also appears in Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food and Religion in Los Angeles: Religious Activism, Innovation, and Diversity in the Global City, and in academic journals including the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Contemporary Jewry, and the Journal of Jewish Identities. Her public scholarship has appeared in The Forward and Haaretz on topics including the #MeToo movement and doxing white supremacists.
As part of her professorship in Applied Jewish Ethics and Civic Engagement, Dr. Thompson developed the first-ever secular university course on applied Jewish Ethics, along with a peer-reviewed Applied Jewish Ethics textbook and a companion website, www.appliedjewishethics.org. She also developed an online map of Jewish sites in the San Fernando Valley in collaboration with CSUN’s Center for Geospatial Science and Technology: www.mappingthejewishvalley.com.
She serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary Jewry and the Journal of Jewish Identities and the board of directors of the Society of Jewish Ethics. She is also co-chair of the Gender Justice Caucus of the Association for Jewish Studies.
Melissa Weininger, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies
Ph.D., Jewish Studies, The University of Chicago, 2010
B.A., English Language and Literature and Women’s Studies, Harvard University, 1995
Jeffrey Auerbach, Ph.D., Professor of History
Shira Brown, M.A., Lecturer in Gender and Women's Studies
- Biography
Shira Brown graduated from California State University, Northridge, with a B.A. in Women’s Studies and English in 2002. Ms. Brown also holds an M.A. in Applied Women’s Studies, with a concentration in Community Building & Education, from Claremont Graduate University, earned in 2004. Immediately after earning her MA, she began working at the Institute for Multicultural Counseling & Education Services, Inc. (IMCES), where she became a Certified Domestic Violence Advocate and Program Coordinator for a CalWorks Domestic Violence program working one-on-one with survivors of domestic violence to provide access to community resources.
Since August 2011, she has served as the Staff Director for CSUN's Women's Research and Resource Center. She has been teaching in the CSUN Gender and Women’s Studies department since Spring 2006.
Dorothy Clark, Ph.D., Professor of English
Dr. Dorothy Clark is a professor of English. She earned both her undergraduate and doctoral degrees at UCLA and received an M.A. in English and a secondary English Credential from CSUN. Dr. Clark has been teaching as full-time faculty at CSUN since 2001.
Teaching
Her interests and courses include Children’s Literature, Yeats, interdisciplinary courses on good and evil, and the Holocaust with a focus on issues of memory and representation. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Dr. Clark has been a board member of the 1939 Society (the largest Holocaust survivor organization in the U.S.) for over a decade. She helped to initiate the Jewish Studies Program’s trips to Poland, leading the first trip in conjunction with Loyola Marymount University in 2010.
Prof. Clark has taught classes on the Holocaust and American Culture and the Rhetoric of Memory, focusing on the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide.
Current Research Interests:
Holocaust education and preserving an “authenticity of memory”; children’s literature and new media; representations of good and evil in popular culture.
Recent Selected Publications:
Co-editor, Frontiers in American Children’s Literature. Accepted for publication by Cambridge Scholars Press, January 2014.
"Healing Shattered Worlds: The Unforeseen Effects of a Second Generation Daughter's Return to Her Parents' Polish Village." Tikkun Magazine, Tikkun Daily, December 2011.
“Hyperread: Repurposing Children’s Literature and Digital Storytelling.” Postmodern Reinterpretations of Fairy Tales. How Applying New Methods Generates New Meanings. Ed. Anna Kérchy. The Edwin Mellen Press, 2011.
“Being’s Wound: Evil and Explanation in The Killer Inside Me,” in the Enigma of Good and Evil: The Moral Sentiment in Literature, edited by A. Tymieniecka, Analecta Husserliana Book Series 85, The Netherlands: Springer Publications, December 2005.
Memberships:
Member of the Editorial Board (Polish Peer Reviewed Journal): A/R/T Journal: Analyses/Rereading/Theories: A Journal Devoted to Literature, Film and Theatre
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Children’s Literature Association (ChLA)
American Literature Association (ALA)
Children’s Literature Society, American Literature Association
Daniela Gerson, Associate Professor of Journalism
M.A. Specialized Journalism, USC Annenberg
B.A. International Relations and History, Brown University
Elaine Goodfriend, Ph.D., Lecturer in Jewish Studies, Religious Studies, and History
Audrey Thacker, Ph.D., Lecturer in English
- Ph.D, English, Claremont Graduate University, 2005
- Dissertation: My Story, Your Story, Our Story--Whose Story? "Storying" the Holocaust and Confronting Questions of Narrative Authority and Authenticity through Art Spiegelman's MAUS: A Survivor's Tale
- M.A., English, California State University, Northridge, 1992
- Thesis: Jewish Dreams/American Dreams: Ethnic Absence and Presence in Four Jewish American Texts
- B.A., English, University of California, Berkeley, 1986
- Thesis: Humor and Emily Dickinson: An Unexpected Acquaintance
Teaching
“Pop Goes the Professor: Brands, Stands and Reprimands in the Teaching of Jewish American Texts,” presented at the conference of the Western Jewish Studies Association (WJSA), Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA, March 2017
In memoriam: Jody Myers, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Religious Studies
Professor Emerita Jody Myers served as Director of the Jewish Studies Program for 34 years. She retired in 2020 and passed away in 2022. Dr. Myers oversaw vibrant and unique programming that served students and the community. She created opportunities for students to travel to Central Europe, gain career skills in Jewish nonprofit organizations, and learn about Jewish environmental thought together with wilderness-survival skills. Community members enjoyed the Jewish Studies film series and public lectures that she offered. Her obituary appeared in the (Minneapolis) StarTribune on Oct. 25, 2022.