A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, she received her Ph.D. from Stanford University, California. Her articles have been published in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (2008), The Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007), The Worlds of S. An-sky (2006), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies (2002) and Yiddish Language and Culture: Then and Now (1998). She previously taught at Georgetown University, Washington DC and has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.