Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Dr. Friedman is a professor in the Department of History. He has served as historian at the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in Los Angeles. His first book, The Lion and the Star: Gentile-Jewish Relations in Three Hessian Communities, 1919-1945 (University Press of Kentucky), was declared one of 1998's "outstanding academic books." His most recent publications include Rainbow Jews: Gay and Jewish Identity in the Performing Arts, Performing Difference: Representations of the ‘Other’ in Film and Theater, and The History of the Holocaust (Routledge).

Dr. Friedman received his B.A. in history from Kent State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Dr. Brewster, Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice, received her Ph.D. from the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice. Dr. Brewster’s areas of specialization include domestic violence, criminological theory, research methodology, and alternatives to incarceration.

Dr. Dean is Professor of Communication Studies and a scholar of speech, with a particular interest in political communication. For many years he was the department's Director of Forensics and has headed WCU's Honors Program. Dr. Dean joined the WCU faculty in 1991 having earned a B.A. from Bowling Green University, an M.A. from Miami University of Ohio, and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.

Dr. Gaydosh received her Ph.D. in History at American University in May 2010. Her area of expertise is modern German history and church history, and she completed her dissertation, under the direction of Richard Breitman, on Father Bernard Lichtenberg, the prelate of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin who protested against Nazi policies towards Jews and persons with disabilities. Father Lichtenberg was imprisoned for two years in Berlin. Following his incarceration, Lichtenberg died in a hospital en route to the Dachau concentration camp.

Dr. Kirschenbaum is Professor of History at West Chester University. She received her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. Primarily a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, her teaching and research has focused on war, gender, childhood, and memory. Her current research focuses on memories of the World War II siege of Leningrad. Publications include the book Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932 (Routledge, 2001) and articles on gender and World War II in the Soviet Union. Her teaching of Women and the Holocaust has won wide praise.

Dr. Klinzing chairs the Department of Communication Studies. His scholarship is in the field of communication education with a particular interest in the health care field. He holds a B.S. from Clarion University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. He joined the faculty of West Chester University in 1976.

An Associate Professor of German at West Chester University, Dr. Landwehr received her her B.S. in German languages and linguistics from Georgetown University, her master's in German literature from Harvard University, and her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1987. Her publications include articles on works by Heinrich von Kleist, Arthur Schnitzler, Josef Roth, pedagogy, postwar German film, and postwar German writers. Her current areas of interest are postwar German film and literature, literature and psychoanalysis, and women writers of Austria and Germany. A current book project deals with trauma, mourning and creativity in postwar German literature and film which will also include a study of Holocaust literature.

Professor of Psychology, Dr. MConatha received her B.A. from the University of Utah, her M.S. from Jacksonville State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1986. She teaches courses on adult development and aging, personality, and cross-cultural psychology. Her research focuses on social and cultural factors affecting the quality of life in adulthood. She has presented papers and written numerous research articles on the ways in which social and emotional support, depression, and spirituality impact well-being in adulthood. Her most recent work addresses the ways in which immigrants struggle to maintain a sense of integrity and a positive sense of self while coping with stress and trauma. She joined the West Chester University faculty in 1990.

Dr. Moser is Assistant Professor of German in the Department of Languages and Cultures. He has published articles on the Austrian writers Thomas Bernhard and Lilian Faschinger; Czernowitz writers; the Austrian Contemporary Novel; German Detective Fiction; and Franz Antel’s Bockerer films. He is currently writing a book, with the working title: Between Victimhood and Collaboration: The Films of Hans Moser. He co-edited and published his late father’s book manuscript on the first deportations of Viennese Jews to the East during the Holocaust: Jonny Moser, Nisko: Die ersten Judendeportationen. (Vienna: Steinbauer, 2012). Dr. Moser received his B.A. in German and French from Hiram College, his M.A. in German literature from the Ohio State University, and his Ph.D. in German literature from the University of Pennsylvania.

Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Professor O’Neill holds a M.S.W. degree from John Jay College of the City University of New York and is currently completing his doctorate there. His areas of expertise include the juvenile justice system, delinquency prevention, and criminological theory.

A native Mississippi and granddaughter of a sharecropper, Southern and cultural historian, LaTonya Thames-Taylor is a magna cum laude graduate of Tougaloo College (1992) and the University of Mississippi (1994, 2005). At West Chester University, she is an Associate Professor ofHistory, Director of the African American Minor, Chair of the Multicultural Faculty Commission, Chair of the Executive Committee of the Frederick Douglass Institute, and the Director of the FDI Summer Scholars Program. In the community, she serves in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as the Chair of Education Committee.

Professor Woolfrey teaches ethical theory and applied ethics. Her specialty is bioethics, and her current research interests focus on the reproductive technologies industry and issues of informed consent. She has published on physician-assisted suicide in the Hastings Center Report, on human cloning, and most recently, on feminist virtue ethics.