Graduate Student Spotlight: Catherine Greer

Catherine Greer, is the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program Graduate Assistant and in the final year of her PhD in German Studies. She will defend her dissertation next semester. Her research, under the supervision of Professor Daniel Magilow, explores musical activity during the Holocaust, with a focus on cultural production in Theresienstadt and its afterlives (postwar performances, commemorations, etc.). As a musician, she is interested in how we employ music to commemorate the Holocaust and the representational, pedagogical, and ethical issues that arise in such memorial and educational projects. She has presented her research at conferences in the US, Canada, Europe, and Israel, and has given talks locally on campus, at Heska Amuna Synagogue, where she is a member, and Temple Beth El.

Catherine has received many prestigious fellowships and grants for her work in Jewish Studies. She currently holds a fellowship for emerging scholars in Jewish Studies with the Posen Society of Fellows. She was the 2017-2018 Margit Meissner Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and has received additional fellowships and grants from the American Academy of Jewish Research, European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), Holocaust Education Foundation at Northwestern University, and the Center for Jewish History.