» Dr. Shira Klein

Assistant Professor

Wilkinson College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of History

Office:

RO 205

Office Hours:

Tue. 4-5 p.m.; Thu. 4- 5 p.m. or by appt.

Phone:

714-516-4581

Email:

sklein@chapman.edu

Education

Tel Aviv University, Bachelor of Arts
University la Sapienza, Master of Arts
New York University, Ph.D.

Biography

Shira Klein is an assistant professor of History. Dr. Shira Klein joined the History Department in Fall 2012 after completing her PhD at New York University.  She is currently revising her doctoral dissertation into a book manuscript, a cultural history of Italian Jews in the modern period. It enquires into the experiences of Italian Jews, as individuals, as families, and as a community, from the time of emancipation in the nineteenth century until after the Holocaust. This research expands the traditional boundaries of European Jewish history. It encompasses both the prewar and postwar periods, and examines both Europe and the United States and Palestine, the overseas destinations of Italian Jewish emigrants.

Dr. Klein has received several prestigious awards to support this research, including a grant from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and from New York University’s Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship.

Dr Klein teaches both introductory surveys and more in-depth courses in Jewish, European, migration, and Holocaust history.

Publications:

Peer-reviewed: “An Army of Housewives: Women’s Wartime Columns in Two Mainstream Israeli Newspapers,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues, Indiana University Press, Vol. 15, Spring 2008, p. 88-107.

Co-authored with A. Kuerbis and M. Armillas-Tiseyra, "Building Bridges," Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, March-April 2011, p. 57-58.

“Displaced Persons Act,” in Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Kathleen Arnold. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2011, p. 160-165.

Courses:

Hist 234: Survey of Jewish History.

This survey course on Jewish history explores Jewish life and identity from Biblical times to the present. Primary sources include the Bible, Rabbinic literature, folklore, diary excerpts, films, and websites.

Hist 358: Jews in Western Europe

This course on Jews in Western Europe traces the history of Jews in France, Germany, and Italy, from their civil emancipation in the wake of the French Revolution, and up to the post-Holocaust period. Students use primary and secondary sources to explore the tumultuous changes that took place in Western Europe over the last 200 years, and the effect they had on the Jewish minority.

Hist 357: History of Jewish Migration

Students trace the central migrations in Jewish history, from exile in the 6th century BCE, to migration to Israel in the 1950s. We examine the “push” and “pull” factors that governed Jewish movement throughout the ages. Primary sources include government documents, memoirs, novels, songs, and immigrant letters.

Hist 317: On the Move! Migrations in World History

This course explores immigrant groups in the last 500 years, including African slave migration, British colonialists in India, Chinese labor migrants, and Palestinian refugees. For each group, we look at causes for departure, adaptation to new destinations, and memory of the migration.