Julia Kitonis is a Senior theatre major and Holocaust studies minor from northern Vermont. She declared her Holocaust studies minor at the start of her freshman year, the program being one of the many things that drew her to ̽̽. Having completed the basic European history requirement in advance of starting at ̽̽, she was able to enroll immediately in Professor Jonathan Huener’s class in Polish history. Having completed that course, she was then able to enroll at the beginning of her sophomore year in a research seminar on the Holocaust in Poland. In the context of that course, she was able to undertake research on a topic that embraced both her fields of study at ̽̽: the function of the performance arts in the Warsaw Ghetto. That research paper that emerged from that course is one of her proudest accomplishments and has become an important part of her graduate school application dossiers. It is also a testament to the breadth of study encouraged in the Holocaust Studies minor, and to the support of her instructor.
In her junior year, Julia completed another seminal course in her academic career, Professor Richard Sugarman’s course "Moral and Religious Perspectives on the Holocaust." Through the investigation and discussion of Jewish leaders and thinkers in their responses to and recognition of the Holocaust, this course helped inspire the kind of interdisciplinary research that Julia would eventually pursue in her senior honors thesis. In her junior year she also completed an independent study course under the supervision of Professor Alan Steinweis on representations of Jewishness in drama. Again, she was grateful for the support she received in combining her interest in Holocaust Studies with her interest in Theatre History. Her final paper for the course, “Survival in Holocaust Filmography: A Comparative Analysis,” was nominated for the annual History Department Student Paper Prize.
This year, Julia has spent the majority of her time working on her honors thesis, an as-yet untitled study of Paula Vogel’s play Indecent as a historiographical lens into queer and Jewish cultural intersections. For this, she has been able to pull from historical, dramaturgical, sociological, religious, and queer theoretical scholarship, something she feels she was well prepared for after three years of diverse and interdisciplinary coursework as part of the Holocaust studies minor, as well as in other fields. Julia has recently committed to attending the University of London Goldsmiths, where she will begin in the fall of 2021 work toward a Master of Arts degree in dramaturgy and writing for performance. There she hopes to continue bringing together the study of theatre and history.