Jewish Studies Faculty

Mira Z. Amiras
Professor, Comparative Religious Studies
PhD in Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley Prof. Amiras founded and has coordinated the Middle East Studies Program since 1987. Her geographical area of expertise is the Middle East and North Africa, and her courses include Magic, Science and Religion; Middle Eastern Traditions; Islam, Politics and the West; Jews, Zionism and the State; Jewish Mysticism, Magic and Folklore.
The author of Development and Disenchantment in Rural Tunisia: The Bourguiba Years (1992), her current research is on Amazigh (Berber) identity and language revitalization in North Africa and in the Amazigh diaspora.

Bruce Bramlett
Lecturer, History and Religious Studies
ABD, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley Bruce Bramlett teaches Holocaust and genocide studies in schools throughout the South Bay, and offers courses on these topics and on modern European Jewish History at Sonoma State and SJSU. He is Associate Director for the Helen and Joe Farkas Center for Holocaust Studies, located at Mercy High School in San Francisco.

Constantine Danopoulos
Professor, Political Science
PhD University of Missouri, Columbia

Constantine Danopoulos teaches a wide range of courses in international relations and comparative politics. He has received the 2003-04 Professor of the Year from Pi Sigma Alpha of the SJSU Political Science Department and is the recipient of the David Ben Gurion Medal for Academic Leadership from Sde Boker, Israel (1999).
Author of numerous articles on civil-military relations and Warriors and Politicians in Modern Greece (1984).

Victoria G. Harrison
Jewish Studies Program Coordinator, Lecturer
PhD in English, Rutgers University

Victoria Harrison teaches Holocaust Literature as well as a MUSE freshman seminar focusing on the Tony Kushner play Angels in America. She coordinates the Jewish Studies Program, bringing cohesion and interdisciplinary commitment to the minor and working closely with Hillel and the larger community to extend programming as widely as possible. Author of essays on American and Jewish-American literatures and Elizabeth Bishop's Poetics of Intimacy (Cambridge 1993).

Donny Inbar
Lecturer, Jewish Studies
PhD, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley

Donny Inbar's research focuses on the roots and birth of Jewish show business and Yiddish theater. He has lectured, taught, and published extensively on Jewish and Israeli arts and culture and on the Hebrew Bible. In Israel he led two parallel careers in Israeli theater and media, and translated plays, prose and poetry. In San Francisco he served as the Cultural Attaché at the Consulate General of Israel. He now serves as Associate Director for Arts and Culture at the Israel Center of the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Federation.

Rina Katzen
Lecturer, Hebrew Language
PhD Hebrew and Judaica study at UC Berkeley

One of the two founding Jewish Studies Program faculty members, Mrs. Katzen has been teaching Hebrew at SJSU for thirty-eight years. She can be credited with keeping the Jewish Studies Program alive through her commitment to her teaching and to the program.

David Meir-Levi
Lecturer, History Department
MA in Near Eastern Studies, Brandeis University

Director of Research and Education at the Israel Peace Initiative, David Meir-Levi writes extensively and lectures throughout Northern California on the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the 1960s and 70s, he taught Archaeology and Near Eastern History at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at University of Tel Aviv. He has a weekly radio show, “Mid-East Media Watch” at KZSU Stanford, and he co-hosts a monthly TV show on local public cable access TV (channel 27): “Spotlight on the Middle East.”

David Mesher
Professor of English
PhD University of Washington

David Mesher's academic scholarship focuses mostly on Jewish writers. He taught for five years at Tel Aviv University and has written several essays in Hebrew for Israeli publications. Earning the 2001-02 College of Humanities Award for Innovative Teaching, Prof. Mesher teaches courses in world literatures, American literature, Holocaust literature; new to his repertoire is a freshman seminar on the history, culture and strategies of board games.

Jonathan Roth
Professor and Chair of History Department
PhD Columbia University

Professor Roth's academic focus is ancient military history, especially that of the Roman Imperial Army, first century Judaism and Christianity from a historical perspective, and race and ethnicity in antiquity. He earned SJSU's Outstanding Professor award for 2005-06. He directs the Burdick Military History Project at SJSU.
Author of numerous articles on ancient military history and Roman Warfare (Cambridge, 2009), Professor Roth has also created a course for the Teaching Company--48 half-hour lectures on War and World History, available on DVD and CD.  

Drew Todd
Lecturer, Radio-TV-Film
PhD in Communication and Culture, Indiana University

Prof. Todd has published on a variety of topics within film studies, including dandyism and cinema, crime films, history of film technology, and the poetics and politics of Satyajit Ray's cinema. He is currently in the process of completing a book on what he terms, "Art Deco Hollywood." In addition to teaching Jewish Cinema and other courses at SJSU, he teaches in UC Santa Cruz's Film and Digital Media Department.

Brent Walters
Lecturer, Comparative Religious Studies
MA in Theology, Boston Theological Institute

"Better than an iPod, more meaningful than a boyfriend, more helpful than Wikipedia" (RateMyProfessor.com comment for Mr. Walters). Earning the highest ratings possible from his students, Mr. Walters brings his extensive knowledge and passion to bear on his subject: the Bible and Biblical history. A collector of early Judeo/Christian writings about religion, philosophy, science, medicine, literature, and the arts, his private library--which he began building at age 15--numbers 85,000 pieces.

After graduating from high school, Mary Warner entered the School sisters of Notre Dame, where she pursued a degree in English and English Education. She taught in Catholic high schools for nine years, working in Cresco, IA, and New England, ND. She earned her Doctor of Arts in English from the University of Michigan, and subsequently taught at Black Hills State (composition, English methods, Foundations of American Education), supervised student teachers, and advised a Native American high school 130 miles from Black Hills State. She later taught at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC. Currently an Associate Professor of English at San José State University, Mary Warner is the author of “Adolescents in the Search for Meaning: Tapping the Powerful Resource of Story.

Marilyn Wyman
Lecturer, Art History and American Studies
PhD, University of Southern California

Professor Wyman's areas of interest include American, Modern, and African Art as well as studies in American culture. She has published and delivered numerous papers on the art of indigenous and/or marginalized cultures within the US and in Africa. With a Koret grant, she has created a digital archive of several thousand images for use in her Jewish Art and her American Jewish Art courses.