After I graduated with a B.A. in German Studies at the University of Arizona, I taught English in Koszalin, Poland for a year, and then joined the graduate program in Germanic Languages at UCLA in 2009. The experience of living in Koszalin eventually inspired my doctoral research on cinematic representations of the forced migrations that occurred in conjunction with the changes to Poland’s borders at the end of WWII. Thanks in part to the Fulbright, I had the opportunity to live and study on the German-Polish border in Frankfurt and to conduct research at institutions throughout Germany and Poland. In June 2017, I graduated with a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages from UCLA, and I am currently the Visiting Assistant Professor of German at Illinois Wesleyan University. As the sole faculty member in German, I am responsible for maintaining IWU's small, but vibrant program.
