Alison Curry is a PhD student in the department of history. She studies modern Polish-Jewish history, the Holocaust, and collective memory and her current research focuses on the function of Jewish cemeteries in Poland during World War II and the immediate post-war. This semester, she is a teaching assistant for JWST 262: “History of the Holocaust: The Destruction of the European Jews” led by Karen Auerbach, associate professor and Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat Scholar in Jewish History. As a teaching assistant, Alison serves as an intermediary between the students and the professor and helps lead in-depth class discussions. This semester she is also helping students find a balance between their class responsibilities and the challenges they are facing during COVID-19 and remote instruction. The one silver lining Alison has noticed this semester is that Zoom has opened up an opportunity for the students to talk to each other via online chat and to reach out to classmates who need support. Alison hopes to teach in the future and serving as an assistant for this course is giving her valuable insight into teaching at the collegiate level.
By Tine Rassalle, graduate assistant for the Center
