I am Dr. Sarah Valente, co-director of the Sandra Kahn Wasserman Jewish Studies Center at CUNY's Baruch College in New York City. I teach courses in Jewish Studies and English at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences.

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In Spring 2022, I served as the Marvin & Edward Kaplan Lecturer in Jewish Studies at CUNY's City College and taught a seminar at the YIVO Institute. To date, I have taught three hundred and eighty-seven graduate and undergraduate students.

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Drawing from my academic training at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies in Dallas, the Leo Baeck Summer University in Berlin, and the Arquivo Histórico Judaico Brasileiro in São Paulo, I teach literature and history courses on topics related to Jewish Studies, Latin American Studies, and Holocaust Studies. I bring an interdisciplinary, multicultural, and multilingual approach to my research and teaching. My research is at the intersection of Latin American and Jewish history, literature, and culture, with a focus on migration, translation, and memory. 

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From 2019 to 2021, I served as visiting assistant professor of Holocaust Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic confinement, I implemented creative ideas into podcasts to promote connection, engagement, and intellectual discussions of history, literature, and culture. I launched the Ackerman Center Podcast in April 2020 to discuss Holocaust-related topics, the Translating the World Podcast to promote writers and translators, and Poems with Sarah in July 2020 to share poetry and multilingual readings. The podcasts reached listeners in 35 countries.

 

As a graduate student, I was selected to be a Belofsky Fellow (2013-2018) at the Ackerman Center, where I completed my Ph.D. in History of Ideas under the supervision of the wonderful Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, Holocaust survivor and the founding director of the Holocaust Studies program at The University of Texas at Dallas.

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Aside from the joy I find in teaching and researching, I am most happy when I spend time with my dear family, and play music on the cello together with my sisters Rubia (violin), Junia (viola), and brother-in-law Fred (violin).