Amy Simon

Biography

Amy Simon (Ph.D., Indiana University—Bloomington) is the new Inaugural Appointee to the William and Audrey Farber Chair in Holocaust Studies and European Jewish History, which is sited in James Madison College and the History Department. She is a core Jewish Studies faculty member. She has worked as a researcher at the United States Holocaust Museum and has published several articles on Holocaust literature and Holocaust perpetrators. Dr. Simon will be the first professor appointed to an endowed Holocaust Studies chair in Michigan. This Fall, she will be teaching MC498 “Senior Seminar in Social Relations: The Holocaust in American Memory.” This course will examine the ever-changing constructions of Holocaust memory in the United States, from the revelations of the horrors of the concentration and death camps in the spring of 1945, through the challenge of Holocaust remembrance in personal testimony, literature, film, and physical memorials in the present day. In Spring 2017 she will be teaching HST411 “European Jewish History,” which will examine post-World War II issues including the emergence of new centers of Jewish life in Europe and the Former Soviet Union, as well as Holocaust memory and memorialization in major European centers. She will also be teaching MC387: “Jews and Anti-Semitism,” which will compare the history and sociology of modern Jewish experiences, explore anti-Semitism and intergroup relations and examine the Holocaust and responses to the Holocaust.