Two USC Students Will Share the 2024 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship

Two USC scholars – graduate students Sarah Ernst and Alexia Orengo-Green, both PhD candidates in History – will share the Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2024.

The Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship provides support for USC students at any academic level and from any discipline to conduct a month of research in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (VHA) and related USC resources and collections. Both research fellows will give public talks about their summer research during the 2024-2025 academic year.

In their doctoral research project, entitled “(Un)Belonging: Queer(ing) Life in the Holocaust and Beyond,” Sarah Ernst delves into the experiences of queer individuals in 20th-century Germany, with special focus given to those living during the Third Reich who were targeted by the Nazis in mass killing programs, including Jewish, Sinti/Roma, and disabled individuals. During their time at the Center, they will set out to examine 71 testimonies of survivors who were in Germany during the period of the Holocaust who discuss queerness in their interviews.

Ernst earned their BA in History and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies from Brandeis University. They have participated in a variety of workshops and conferences, including the the Queer History Conference (Fullerton, CA), “Animals and the Holocaust” workshop (Oxford, UK), the German Studies Association Conference (Atlanta, GA), and the German Historical Institute’s Young Scholars Forum (Berkeley, CA). They have been awarded fellowships and funding support from the German Historical Institute’s Fritz Thyssen Pre-Dissertation Fellowship and the USC Ralph and Jean Hovel Memorial Summer Travel Award, among others.

Like Sarah Ernst, Alexia Orengo-Green is also a PhD candidate in History in the USC Van Hunnick Department of History. Her research interests include the Holocaust, children, migration, and the history of emotions. In her doctoral research project, tentatively entitled “Into the Unknown: Jewish Children’s Migration to Latin America During the Holocaust,” she focuses on the Jewish children who with or without their parents escaped Nazi Germany and its territories for Latin America, specifically Argentina and Puerto Rico. During her time at the Center, she will examine a wealth of material in the VHA. There are 970 testimonies in which survivors discuss Argentina or Puerto Rico, 531 of them from child Holocaust survivors. A total of 407 interviews were conducted in the countries of migration.

Orengo-Green earned a BA in History and Archaeology at Dickinson College, and a Masters in Public History at New York University. As part of her doctoral studies, she has completed a Graduate Certificate in Jewish History. She has been awarded several fellowships for international research in countries such as Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, Puerto Rico, and Argentina. In Fall 2024, Orengo-Green will be the 2024 Junior Fellow at the Center for Holocaust Studies, a joint fellowship between the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.