Kathie Friedman

Project Description

Associate Professor, Jackson School of International Studies

Ph.D. State University of NY, Binghamton

Faculty Profile

I am Associate Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School, where my teaching is divided between International Studies and Jewish Studies. I am also an adjunct professor in the Sociology and Women’s Studies Departments, and am affiliated with African Studies and the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Near and Middle Eastern Studies.

In general, my research and courses ask how immigrants and refugees become integrated and engaged in their new homes.  Two particular aspects of this question intrigue me. First, I am interested in the political identities and civic engagement of immigrants and their children who have fled violent ethno-national conflict in their homelands. Second, I am curious about the different ways immigrants attempt to transfer their homeland memories and ethnic sentiments across time and space, and how subsequent generations interpret them. My first book, Memories of Migration, examined the work and community life of Russian Jewish and Italian women who immigrated to New York before 1924. My second book, in progress, The Afterlife of Ethnic Cleansing, explores the experiences of Bosnian refugee families who settled in the US after 1992.

My Ph.D. is in Sociology from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and though I continue to draw on sociology, I enjoy incorporating the insights of historians, anthropologists, political scientists, filmmakers, and novelists in my research and teaching.