Ph. D., UCLA, 1983. Dorot Professor of English and Hebrew/Judaic Studies, 1984-1988. Since 1988, ofessor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and currently Chair of the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies. Appointed to the Findungskommission for Germany's national "Memorial to Europe's Murdered Jews".

Publications include: Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust (1988), The Texture of Memory (1993), The Art of Memory (1994), At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (2000), Editor-in-Chief of the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization (2000).