Biography

I was born in Saint Paul Minnesota in 1949 and I graduated from Highland Park Senior High School in 1967.  I attended New York University for two years and studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for my Junior Year Abroad in 1969-70.  I graduated in Humanities summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota in 1971, and received my PhD in German History from Minnesota in 1979.

After a year teaching at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, I moved to  the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1979 and remained there until 1996.  In that year I accepted a position at  Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville New York.  In 2003, I was offered  the Wouk Chair in Modern Jewish Studies at the University of California at San Diego, and  I began teaching at UCSD in January 2004. I have held visiting appointments at the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa, and at Harvard University.

My husband Martin Bunzl is the Director of the Initiative on Climate and Social Policy at the Eagleton Institute of Politics and a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. 

Our son Noah  graduated from  Harvard University in 2008, and will be working in Israel during the academic year 2008-2009.  Our daughter Zola is a high-school student at the Balboa City School  in San Diego.