Speakers

Who:
Lisa Marcus, Professor of English, Chair of Critical Interdisciplinary Studies, and Director of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at PLU

Bio:
Lisa Marcus earned her B.A. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her Ph.D from Rutgers University, and joined the English department in 1995. She has been active in campus-wide diversity education and advocacy; she chaired the Women’s and Gender Studies program for many years, and is a founding member of PLU’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program. She is deeply committed to first year education and regularly teaches a popular writing seminar on Banned Books for the First Year Experience Program. Her constellation of courses in the English department include: Stories from a Land Divided: Reading Israel/Palestine; Sex, Gender, and Holocaust Literature; The Holocaust in the American Literary Imagination; American Literature 1914-45: Race, Sex, and War; Anne Frank as a Holocaust Icon; Women’s Voices from the Holocaust: Gender, Memory, and Resistance in Holocaust Literature; and a first-year seminar on Holocaust Literature developed with Professor Rona Kaufman. Lisa is planning to teach a study away class on Holocaust Memory and Memorialization in Holocaust Literature in Krakow, Budapest, Prague, and Berlin in January 2027.

She has had fellowships at Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Northwestern’s Holocaust Education Foundation, and has published on topics ranging from the Jewish American Girl doll to teaching Holocaust Literature.

Who:
Christina Chavarría, Program Coordinator in the Levine Institute for Holocaust Education at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

Bio:
Christina Chavarría is a Program Manager in the William Levine Family Institute for Holocaust Education at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, since December 2006. Christina currently runs the Community of Holocaust Education Centers (CHEC) program that works with Holocaust organizations around the country. She is also part of a team overseeing the Museum’s implementation of the Never Again Education Act, federal legislation that supports Holocaust education around the US. Christina has represented the Museum in Europe, Latin America, Japan, Israel, and across the United States. Her interests lie in Holocaust literature and researching and disseminating information on how the Holocaust impacted and was impacted by the Spanish-speaking world. Previously, Christina served as Director of Education at Holocaust Museum Houston. Prior to that, she was a high school English teacher for nine years in El Paso, Texas, her city of birth.

Who:
Samanta Casareto, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, Universidad de Buenos Aires- Representative for Latin America, International Archival Programs. The David M. Rubenstein National Institute For Holocaust Documentation, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Bio:
Samanta Casareto holds a Master’s degree in History from the University of Paris I Sorbonne. She currently serves as the Director of Documentary Collections Management at the National Archives. She is a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the UBA. She has also served as the Latin American Director of the International Archives Program at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum since 2001, and has coordinated the University and Dictatorship Documentation Center of the Free Chair of Human Rights at the UBA since 2006.

Who:
Heather Mathews, Chair of Communication, Media & Design Arts, Associate Professor of Art History

Bio:
Heather Mathews joined the Department of Art and Design in 2007. She earned her B.A. in Art History and German from Hood College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin.

Her specialization is the German art of the Cold War period, and she is interested in all aspects of German cultural and history. Her research and publications are focused on the role of the artist in public discourse in East and West Germany, as well as on the exhibition of contemporary art as a cultural and political force in the Cold War era and today. Her most recent work deals with contemporary art and cultural integration.

In addition to teaching on topics such as gender issues, identity, and memory in modern and contemporary art, Heather is Coordinator of the University Gallery (including the University Gallery Annex and the Karen Hille Phillips Gallery) and manages the University’s Permanent Art Collection.

Who:
Makayla Martinez, Mayer Summer Scholar, Pacific Lutheran University

Bio:
Makayla Martinez is an undergraduate student at Pacific Lutheran University, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in History and Gender, Sexuality, and Race Studies, expected to graduate in 2027. As a first-generation Dominican scholar, Makayla’s work explores how history, culture, and identity intersect to shape narratives of belonging and resistance. They are passionate about uncovering overlooked stories and challenging the ways power defines whose histories are told. Outside of research, Makayla finds inspiration in A24 films, romance novels, and music, all of which deepen their love for storytelling and representation.

Who:
Meredith Gifford, Mayer Summer Scholar, Pacific Lutheran University

Bio:
Meredith Gifford is a second-year student at PLU and will be graduating in 2028 with a double-major in History and Political Science and a double-minor in Pre-Law and Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She is from Portland, Oregon, and is spending the 2025 fall semester studying away in Oxford, England.

Who: 
Austyn Blair, Lemkin Essay winner, Pacific Lutheran University

Bio:
Austyn Blair graduated from Pacific Lutheran University in May of 2025 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature with minors in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Religion, and Gender and Sexuality Studies. During his time at PLU, he was the 2023 student speaker at convocation, a panelist for the 2024 new student orientation, a member of the 2024-2025 Wild Hope Fellowship, and was a Kurt Mayer fellow for the summer of 2024 where he researched the Bosnian Genocide. His senior capstone was titled “Memory, Morality, and Misinformation: The Controversy (and Necessity) of Holocaust Fiction.” Austyn is currently living in Galway, Ireland and wants to continue his involvement in the field of Holocaust and Genocide Studies when he returns to the US in 2026.

Who: 
Lexi Jason, Education Program Manager, Holocaust Center for Humanity, Seattle

Bio:
Lexi Jason is the Education Program Manager at the Holocaust Center for Humanity. Previously, she taught Holocaust Literature at Pacific Lutheran University and, before that, managed the Speakers Bureau at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Lexi is always happy to return to her alma mater of PLU, where she received a minor in Holocaust and Genocide Studies before moving on to earn a masters in Holocaust Studies from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Who: 
Parker Brocker-Knapp, Law Student, Lewis and Clark Law School

Bio:
Parker Brocker-Knapp graduated summa cum laude from PLU in 2023 majoring in Hispanic & Latino Studies and minoring in Holocaust & Genocide Studies and Business Administration. Parker is currently a 2nd year law student at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, OR. As a 2025 Sid Lezak Social Justice Fellow at Lewis & Clark Law, Parker recently served as a legal clerk for an immigration legal services non-profit in Portland using the linguistic and cultural skills that PLU taught him. This coming spring, Parker will serve as a full-time extern for the United States District Court for the District of Oregon in the chambers of the Honorable Michael H. Simon. In his work on this project during his time at PLU, Parker transcribed the raw footage of the recorded interviews, translated the transcriptions from Spanish to English, and created subtitled videos for use in the classroom. Under the guidance of Drs. Urdangarain and Kaufman, Parker then presented on his role as a translator at the 2023 University of Washington Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Who:
Rona Kaufman, Professor of English and Holocaust and Genocide Studies Faculty, Pacific Lutheran University

Bio:
Rona Kaufman is a Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Pacific Lutheran University. Her areas of expertise include writing studies, literacy, creative nonfiction, and the English Language. She won a Faculty Excellence Award in Mentoring in 2016-2017 from PLU and the Graves Award in the Humanities in 2008. With Dr. Giovanna Urdangarain, she is working on a project about the Jewish diaspora in Uruguay, which includes gathering testimony from Jewish refugees and their children. Rona is also writing a series of essays about marriage, motherhood, and migration.

Who:
Giovanna Urdangarain, Professor of Hispanic and Latino Studies, Gender, Sexuality and Race Studies, and Holocaust and Genocide Studies Faculty, Pacific Lutheran University

Bio:
Giovanna Urdangarain is Professor of Hispanic and Latino Studies at Pacific Lutheran University where she has also taught for the Programs of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Gender, Sexuality and Race. Her main research area is the Latin American Southern Cone post-dictatorial cultural production, which she analyzes from the intersection of Memory and Trauma Studies. She has published on narrative and documentary filmmaking depicting political violence in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. She co-led a research project with Dr. Rona Kaufman that consisted in gathering and digitizing testimonies of members of the Uruguayan Jewish Diaspora including women Holocaust survivors.

Who:
Stephanie Johnson, Dean, College of Liberal Studies

Bio:

Dr. Stephanie Johnson is Dean of the College of Liberal Studies at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) and Professor of English.

Prior to beginning as dean in 2024, Dr. Johnson served as Professor of English, Chair of the Department of English and Communication, and Director of the Honors Program at The College of St. Scholastica. Previously, she taught as a visiting professor at University of Puget Sound and Valparaiso University, where she also held a Lilly Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Dr. Johnson earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 2005 with a dissertation titled The Ethics of Epiphany in Wordsworth, Tennyson, Barret Browning, and Woolf. She graduated with an M.S. in English from the University of Minnesota in 1009 and a B.A in English and Religion from St. Olaf College in 1989.

Her areas of teaching expertise include the British long nineteenth century; poetry; women’s gender, and sexuality studies; narrative ethics; and writing. Her journal articles and book chapters primarily focus on Victorian women’s devotional poetry and on the lyric as form. She is also the co-editor of Cultivating Vocation in Literary Studies (Edinburgh 2022), a collection of essays that addresses the vital role that literary studies can and should play in conversations with undergraduates about purposeful living and the multiple responsibilities of civic life.

Who:
Adriana Brodsky, Professor of History, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Bio:
Adriana M. Brodsky is Professor of Latin American and Jewish History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her book Sephardi, Jewish, Argentine: Creating Community and National Identity, 1880-1960, appeared in 2016, and her most recent publication is a co-edited volume called Jews Across the Americas (with Laura Leibman). She has published on Sephardi food, schools, beauty contests, and Latin American Jewish History in general. She is currently finishing a manuscript on Argentine youth in Zionist movements (1940s-1970s). She is co-President of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA).

Who:
Daniela Gleizer Salzman, Institute of Historical Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

Bio:
Daniela Gleizer is an associate researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) focusing on the relationship between the Mexican state and foreigners, particularly on immigration and naturalization policies. She has also worked on the relationship between Mexico and the Third Reich, and the role of the consuls in granting visas during the Second World War. Gleizer is currently working on two projects: one on the limits of citizenship policy in Mexico and the other on the witness accounts of Holocaust survivors who arrived in Mexico.

Who:
Bruce Kadden, Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Beth El, Tacoma and Faculty, Religion and Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Pacific Lutheran University

Bio:
Bruce Kadden is rabbi of Temple Beth El in Tacoma and Adjunct Professor in the Religion Department, part of Holocaust and Genocide Studies faculty, and Affiliate Chaplain at PLU. He and his wife Barbara of blessed memory are authors of three books in Jewish education. He was the editor of a symposium on the theme of “Poetry after Auschwitz” that appeared in the Journal of Reform Judaism in Winter 2015 comprised of articles by PLU faculty. He earned his B.A. in Religious Studies from Stanford University and was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Who:
PhD and Founding partner at Child Behavior Therapy Associates

Bio:
Grace Kalfus is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Frieda Kalfus (née Dulberg) and Chaim (Harry) Kalfus. Grace tells the story of her mother who was born in Jablonow, Poland in 1923. Frieda’s life changed in 1939 when Hitler signed a non-aggression pact giving Frieda’s town and the eastern part of Poland to Russia. Her life was even more dramatically altered in 1941 when the Nazis invaded this area and the Russians ran East. Frieda was separated from her family at this time and traveled to Uzbekistan.

She returned to Poland in 1945 with a husband she married in order to survive, and she was unable to find her parents or her sisters or what had happened to them. Frieda became a mother to her husband’s niece who had been hidden with a Gentile family, and the three of them live in a displaced person’s camp for several years prior to emigrating to America. Frieda, wanting more from her life than this marriage of convenience, obtained a divorce and later married Grace’s father, who was born in Tarnow, Poland; together they created their own family.

Grace presents her mother’s story to honor her memory and to share Frieda’s kindness, courage, and strength which have guided her own family and which serve as a lesson to us all.

Grace was born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, New York, spending summers with her family in the bungalow colonies of the Catskill Mountains, in upstate New York. She lives in New Rochelle with her husband and her miniature poodle Clover; Grace’s two adult daughters live fairly close by. Grace is a founding partner at Child Behavior Therapy Associates, LLP, and received her PhD and MA from West Virginia University in Clinical Psychology and her BA from Binghamton University.

Grace has written, and privately published for her family, a children’s picture book to memorialize the love and dedication her mother bestowed on both her own children and her grandchildren called Loving Bubby.

Grace a member of GenerationsForward, a group of second and third generation individuals sponsored by the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center of White Plains, New York.

Who:
Michael Halvorson, Benson Family Chair in Business and Economic History, Pacific Lutheran University

Bio:
Michael Halvorson teaches business and economic history courses in the Department of History at PLU, as well as classes on innovation and the history of technology. His most recent books are This Little World: A How-to Guide for Social Innovators (2024), co-authored with Shelly Cano Kurtz, and Code Nation: Personal Computing and the Learn to Program Movement in America (2020). Both projects offer a “behind-the-scenes” look at digital transformation in American society and its potential for positive social change.

Prof. Halvorson is also interested in oral history and its use in preserving the memories and contributions of technology workers and organizations. He is currently working with Microsoft as a senior oral historian to record the memories of its alumni as the company approaches its 50th anniversary (1975-2025). A sample of his scholarship in this area is “The Help Desk: Changing Images of Product Support in Personal Computing, 1975-1990,” published in Abstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society, edited by Janet Abbate and Stephanie Dick (Johns Hopkins, 2022).

PLU’s Innovation Studies program was co-founded by Prof. Halvorson in 2017 to cultivate innovative thinking across campus and engage with community partners that use academic resources and innovative technology for the public good. Halvorson teaches in the program and served as its inaugural director from 2017 to 2024.

Who:
Professor Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, Emory University

Bio:
Jeffrey Lesser is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History at Emory University. His research focuses on the relationships between immigration, ethnicity, and national identity. His new book, Living and Dying in São Paulo: Immigrants, Health, and the Built Environment in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2025; Editora UNESP, 2025), focuses on a multi-ethnic, working class, neighborhood to analyze how the state creates and enacts health policies and asks why different immigrant groups often generate similar responses to state actions. Lesser is also the author of a number of prize-winning books published in English, Portuguese, Japanese, and Hebrew: Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (University of California Press/Imago Editora/Tel Aviv University Press); Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Duke University Press/Editora UNESP/Akashi Shoken); A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese-Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy (Duke University Press/Editora Paz e Terra); and most recently Immigration, Ethnicity and National Identity in Brazil (Cambridge University Press/Editora UNESP).

Lesser is the winner of multiple teaching awards and has won national and international fellowships from Fulbright, , the Ford Foundation, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Who:
Bridget Yaden, Professor of Hispanic Studies and Associate Provost, Pacific Lutheran University

Bio:
I am a proud native of Tacoma and first generation college student that began my formal second language study in high school. My grandparents were native speakers of Gaelic who immigrated to Tacoma, so my love of languages and cultures started early.

I stayed local for college, earning my BA in Spanish from WWU and my MA and PhD in Romance linguistics from the UW. I was fortunate to be able to study away in many locations over the years, including Spain, Guatemala, and Russia. In addition to Spanish, I have studied Latin, Portuguese, and Russian.

I’m passionate about second language acquisition and linguistics as well as supporting pre-service ELL, bilingual, and world language teachers. My service to PLU and to the profession is a big part of my lift outside of teaching and scholarship. Most recently, I’ve served as the 2020 president of our national world language teacher association of over 12,000 educators (ACTFL) and I serve as PLU’s Associate Provost for Undergraduate Programs.

Who:
Natasha Zaretsky, Clinical Associate Professor at New York University and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey where she leads the Truth in the Americas initiative

Bio:
Natasha Zaretsky, Ph.D. is a cultural anthropologist who works on human rights, genocide, and the politics of memory in the Americas and the Jewish diaspora. Currently, she is a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, where she leads the Truth in the Americas Initiative. She has taught courses in anthropology, Jewish Studies, Latin American Studies, human rights, memory studies, comparative genocide, and writing at Princeton University, Rutgers University, and New York University. Recent publications include «Sites of Reckoning» (co-edited with J. Burnet as a special issue of Memory Studies; 2023). Her articles have appeared in Religious Studies and Theology, The Tablet, Global Americans, Political and Legal Anthropology Review, and Foreign Affairs. Her book, Acts of Repair: Justice, Truth, and the Politics of Memory in Argentina (Rutgers University Press 2021), explores memory and survival in the aftermath of genocide and political violence in Argentina. At EWP, she currently coordinates the Senior Honors Thesis Writing Group Program, and has served on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, the Professional Development Committee, and the Steering Committee, as well as organizing the Pathways Symposium. She also serves as Faculty Advisor for a VIP Team, the NYU Democracy Research Initiative. In addition to writing and teaching, she is currently working on a documentary film, 1000 Mondays, about memory and social justice in Argentina. For her latest projects, please visit www.natashazaretsky.com.

Who:
Tamara Williams, Executive Director of the Wang Center for Global and Community Engaged Education and Professor of Hispanic and Latino Studies, Pacific Lutheran University

Bio:
Tamara R. Williams is a Professor of Hispanic Studies with expertise in the Latin American region. Before assuming the role of Executive Director of the Wang Center, she taught Spanish Language at many levels as well as courses focused on Latin American literatures and cultures. She is the author of several articles on Latin American poetry and project coordinator of the bilingual edition of Ernesto Cardenal’s El estrecho dudoso/The Doubtful Strait published by Indiana University Press. Her current research interests focus on masculinities as they relate to the recovery of lyrical subjectivities in contemporary Mexican poetry and fiction. She pioneered PLU’s first J-term Study Away Spanish immersion course in Costa Rica (now offered in Uruguay) and is co-founder, with Professor John Lear (UPS) of PLU’s Fall Semester Program in Oaxaca, Mexico. At PLU, she has been a tireless advocate for global education.

Who:
Daniel Stahl, Senior Researcher, Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

Bio:
Daniel Stahl is Researcher at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Dr. Stahl specializes in the history of human rights, the transnationalization of law and Latin and Latin-American-European relations. He has published books at the Hunt for Nazis in South America and the history of the arms trade.

Who:
Avner Abraham, Researcher, lecturer, former Mossad officer, world expert on Operation Finale

Bio:
Avner Avraham is a former Mossad lieutenant colonel and Israeli Police officer, and is deputy editor of Israel Intelligence Heritage Center magazine, as well as a lecturer, film producer and exhibition curator. Avner is a renowned expert on Mossad operations who famously worked to reveal and publicize the inside story of the historic 1960 capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

While working as a Mossad agent, Avner discovered the original documents surrounding Eichmann’s capture and trial, and — moved to share his findings with a wider audience — he curated the world-famous and headline-making museum exhibit Operation Finale: The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann, and produced an accompanying documentary.

With the story now the subject of a major motion picture — MGM’s Operation Finale starring Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley — for which Avner served as senior consultant. Avner also served as a Mossad consultant on the Netflix series Inside the Mossad.

Who:
Giza Alterwajn

Bio:
Giza Alterwajn was born in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940. She was smuggled out of the Ghetto as a toddler in a suitcase. As she and her rescuer passed the guards, the barking of a trained dog drowned out any cries from the baby, allowing them to slip past undetected. Giza escaped the fate of her parents, who were murdered in Treblinka and Auschwitz. She was then hidden in the home of a Polish Christian family and migrated to Uruguay when she was seven.