She teaches classes on Polish literature, comparative Central European culture, and film/media studies. Jessie received her PhD in Comparative Literature at New York University in 2004, and was a postdoc at Stanford in the Department of Comparative Literature from 2004 to 2007, where she researched connections between underground samizdat literature, tamizdat publishing, and foreign radio broadcasting. Her co-edited volume on this topic, Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond was published by Berghahn Books in March 2013. She has also published articles on Yugoslav popular culture, Polish film, and the historical controversy over Polish-Jewish relations during WWII. Current research projects include a monograph entitled Transatlantic Central Europe, and a follow-up project on film crossing borders in postwar Europe.