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Current students

Alisha Gajjar-Fleming

Slavic Studies
Office: CLE D267
Alicia Ward

Germanic and Slavic Studies
Janine Wulz

Interdiciplinary Germanic and Slavic Studies
On Parental Leave

2024 Graduates

Anthony Auchterlonie, MA in Germanic and Slavic Studies with a concentration in Holocaust Studies

Thesis Title: "Memory, Politics, and Place: Revitalizing Indigeneity and Unsettling Colonial Narratives With Reflections from Holocaust Memorial Culture"

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Mo Mitchell, MA in Germanic and Slavic Studies with a concentration in Holocaust Studies

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Hanna Protasova, MA in Germanic and Slavic Studies with a concentration in Slavic Studies

Thesis Title: "Between Oblivion and Remembrance: The Representation of the Holocaust in Soviet Ukrainian Fiction and Non-Fiction of the 1940s–1960s"

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2023 Graduates

Carolina Alves Pereira, MA in Germanic and Slavic Studies with a concentration in Germanic Studies 

Thesis Title: "Creators and Creatures: Visualizing Franz Kafka"

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2022 graduates

Rachel Colquhoun, MA, Germanic and Slavic Studies,
with a concentration in Holocaust Studies

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Liping Ge, MA, Germanic and Slavic Studies

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Liping wrote her thesis on The Cultural Politics in East Germany and China: Literature and Art (1949-1979).

 

Michaela Sawyer, MA, Holocaust Studies

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Before completing her MA in Holocaust Studies, Michaela also received a diploma in Cultural Resource Management through UVIC in 2020. As well as a BA with a joint major in History and World Literature from SFU before that. Michaela’s masters research sought to combine her work in the Cultural Resource Management field with the Holocaust Studies stream by examining the restitution of art and artifacts stolen during the Second World War. Her research project, entitled “Going Home: Restitution of Little-Known Casualties of the Second World War (A Herzog and Cassirer Case Study)” examines the idea of Object Biographies and how the inclusion of this concept in restitution work is something often overlooked but equally important in the lives of these objects.

 

2021 graduates

Alan Bancroft, MA, Slavic Studies

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Alan holds an Associate of Arts from Collin College (2016), a BA in Slavic Studies with Honours from the ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø (2019), and an MA in Slavic Studies from the ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø (2021). He has presented papers at multiple conferences during his studies at UVic, including "The Carnivalesque, Modernity, and Post-Modernity in the Films of Ilya Khrzhanovsky" at the Identity - Culture - Text UVic Graduate Conference on Mikhail Bakhtin; "From FEKS to Socialist Realism: Ideology and Continuity in The New Babylon (1929), Alone (1931), and The Youth of Maxim (1935)" at the UVic Interdisciplinary Conference on Identity, Gender and Ideology; and "Guy Maddin's Seances (2016): A Network of Loss. New Media, Network Pessimism, and Destituent Power" at the UVic Cultural, Social, and Political Thought Symposium. His research interests include socialist realist cinema, avant-garde cinema, the aesthetics of Stalinism, Marxism, critical theory, and visual art, all of which he attempts to incorporate into his own filmmaking practice. 

Alan defended his MA thesis, "The Sublated Style of a Cinema In Transition: Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, and Oleksandr Dovzhenko from the 1920s - 1930s" in June 2021. He has one publication in the experimental journal Academia Letters (2021) entitled "Arguing for the Soviet Transition Film: Oleksander Dovzhenko's Ivan (1931)" and is currently a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal, QC. 


Eliza McClenagan, MA, Holocaust Studies

Eliza McClenaganEliza completed a BA in English and History at the University of Northern British Columbia before coming to UVic for her MA. She is particularly interested in Christian antisemitism, churches’ responses to the Holocaust, and Christian-Jewish relations in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Eliza’s MA thesis focuses on developments in German Protestant theology in the years prior to and during the Holocaust. She examines the growth of more radical Protestant movements and the ways in which Protestant theological texts showed a gradual increase in anti-Jewish elements in the years leading up to 1933.

 


Emma Murray, MA, Slavic Studies

 image Emma Murray is an MA graduate of the Slavic Studies at the ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø. She received her Bachelor’s degree from UVic in History and Slavic Studies with a specific interest in Ukrainian Studies, completing a Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award project on the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity. As an undergraduate, Emma also studied at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Ukraine through the department’s summer study abroad program.

Emma’s research investigated the commemoration of the 2013/14 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity and the ways in which memorialization of such may influence efforts to establish a sound system of democracy in Ukraine. In her first year as a graduate student, she conducted primary research in Ukraine to support her thesis by interviewing residents of Kyiv about the legacy of the revolution. She also undertook a volunteer position with the National Museum of the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv, collecting information about museums and exhibits across the city in order to provide feedback and make recommendations regarding the future development of the museum.

In addition to her fieldwork in Ukraine and research at UVic, Emma also served as a graduate student representative on the Executive Board of the Canadian Association of Slavists. She has given presentations at multiple academic conferences, both locally and abroad, sharing her research on the revolution and enthusiasm for the subject.

Her thesis “Heavenly Fighters for Ukrainian Civil Society: The Cultivation of Democratic Culture through the Memorialization of the Revolution of Dignity” is available to read on the UVicSpace website. 


Giorgia Ricciardi, MA, Holocaust Studies

Giorgia RicciardiGiorgia Ricciardi is a 2021 Master's graduate in the Holocaust studies stream at the ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø. She received her Bachelor of Arts from UVic in 2018, completing a double major in History and Spanish. During her undergraduate degree, Giorgia completed a Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award Project on the largest Fascist Italian internment camp for Jews: Ferramonti di Tarsia. Before returning to UVic to begin her Master's, Giorgia lived in Madrid, Spain, teaching English. 

Giorgia's SSHRC-funded Master’s research focused on the history of Spanish Republican women in the French Resistance and in Nazi camps, and their memorialization in Spain today. Her research interests include gender and resistance during the Holocaust, and her interdisciplinary work combines areas of study in history, memory studies, and Holocaust studies.

Giorgia's current publications include: "Mussolini and the Jews: What Inspired Fascist Antisemitic Policy in Italy?" in Plvs Vltra (2018), "Honouring Carl Lutz: Reflecting on the Memorialization of a Forgotten Hero" in Their Trace (2020), “Polish Collaboration and Contemporary Memory Polemics: Addressing the 'Polocaust’ Myth” in Verges (2020), and “History Does Not Stand Still: How a New VHEC Workshop Addresses Antisemitism, Hatred, and Propaganda” in Zachor (2021). 

2020 graduates

Caitlin Burrit, MA, Holocaust Studies
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After completing her BA in Germanic Studies at the ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø, Caitlin moved to Dresden, Germany in 2015. Living and teaching in Dresden inspired her Master’s project, a graphic novel focusing on the relationship between Holocaust memory in Dresden and the city’s response to the Refuge Crisis of 2015. Over the summer she completed the I-witness Holocaust Field School program, as well as a research practicum at the Ravensbrück Memorial where she studied artwork made by the prisoners of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. 

Her final MA thesis project is entitled "We Are Harmless: An Arts-Based Autoethnographic Graphic Novel on Holocaust Memory in Dresden”.
 


Mikhail Busch, MA 
Mikhail Busch

Mikhail's MA thesis is entitled “Spirituality and German Romanticism: The Influence of Jakob Böhme on Novalis and Caspar David Friedrich”. It reconciles the notion of the spiritual with that of the aesthetic by focusing on the influence of 16th century German mystic Jakob Böhme, with the 19th century cultural movement of German Romanticism.

 

 





Braden Russell, MA, Holocaust Studies
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Before coming to UVic, Braden attended Texas Tech University where he earned a Bachelors of Arts in Global Studies with focuses in Political Science, Biology and German. He then continued at Texas Tech to earn a Masters of Art in Language and Culture with a concentration in German where he helped TA German language and culture courses. He has also studied at Humboldt Universität through the Leo Baeck Summer Institute in German-Jewish Studies.

Braden’s research and thesis project focused on Holocaust memorialization within the urban landscape of Vienna, Austria with special attention to homosexual victims of the Holocaust. His work intersects areas in studies of nationalism, gender and queer studies, memory studies, Jewish studies, and Holocaust studies.

Braden chose UVic because it was on the very few degree programs with a specific focus in Holocaust Studies. He has enjoyed his time being a part of a friendly and supportive department and graduate student cohort. The opportunities to work with faculty on projects is what Braden admired most about being in the MA program. His final research paper is entitled: “Re-membering Queer Victims of National Socialism in Vienna, Austria: Memory, Myth, Ambivalence, and Action”.

 

Tessa Coutu, MA, Holocaust Studies

TessaTessa's thesis focused on how Holocaust education can be incorporated into the province of British Columbia’s new high school curriculum, particularly within the context of human rights and social justice education. With the B.C. curriculum’s shift from prescribed learning outcomes to concept-based and competency-driven learning, educators are provided with autonomy to teach about the Holocaust outside of History 12. As a Métis student, Tessa would like to incorporate Canada’s treatment of its indigenous people into her work. Without comparing, she hopes to bring students’ attention to the lasting effects traumatic pasts can have. As part of her program, she completed a co-op at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, which solidified her view on the importance of bringing Holocaust education into B.C. schools.


Davjola Ndoja, MA, Holocaust Studies

imageDavjola's research paper focused on "German National Socialist Black Metal: Contemporary Neo-Nazism and the On-Going Struggle with Antisemitism” and the role of music in extreme-right movements in Europe. She studied the official opposition party in German Parliament - the Alternative for Germany (AfD) - and how they are frequently accused of racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic and xenophobic attitudes and behaviours, with links to far-right movements and extremist groups. She explored how music plays a crucial role in broadening and strengthening support for the AfD and other far-right political movements through politicized anthems being feature prominently at rallies and other sponsored gatherings.

Davjola also presented her research in a lecture on National Socialist Black Metal, a sub-genre of Black Metal, and its role in the promotion of National Socialism in modern Germany.