Deborah A Kaye

Biography

Growing up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, I gained much from my early education at the Hathaway Brown School for Girls where, more than anything else, I loved studying art, hoping one day to make a career as an artist.  Upon graduation, an exceptional offer came from Mount Holyoke, but I declined it, hoping to follow my sister who had studied art at Parsons School of Design.  The twists and turns of life, however, sent me on another path when my parents decided to make Arizona their retirement destination.  Preferring to stay close to home, I entered the University of Arizona studying art history and Italian, hoping to travel to Italy and study art as the daughter of a family friend was doing at the time.  Fate put my academic career on hold; although this was the first time, it would by no means be the last!  Instead, I dropped out of college after my freshman year to accompany my sister in an exciting new business venture, opening a women's clothing store in Tucson in 1970s.  Within a few years, the store became a successful chain of apparel shops in large measure thanks to our father’s business acumen not to mention two sisters' hard work!

After 8 years, my sister and I wanted to go our separate ways, so we decided to sell the stores.  The desire to succeed in an art career was always in the back of my mind.  I packed up and took my dreams to a new adventure in Israel where our family’s good friends Frank and Batya Meisler had offered to help me embark on a career path in the art field.  Frank, an architect and artist, ran a well-known gallery in the artist’s colony of Jaffa.  It was there, in Jaffa, that I worked for and with the Meislers and later, for Horace Richter (brother of Hans) who mentored me in developing expertise in buying and selling art.

No one was happier that I had gone to live in Israel than my parents.  They were ardent Zionists who sent me as a young child to the Cleveland Hebrew Schools, Cleveland's best known Talmud Torah.  Four days a week after school I went still wearing my Hathaway Brown uniform, immersed in modern Hebrew language and study.  CHS not only developed my Hebrew ability, but also inspired an intensely passionate love for Israel.   Arriving in Jaffa and Tel Aviv as a young woman years later, was, in many respects, a dream come true.   Yet, after ten years there, even though, I had achieved success in the art and business world, I felt something missing.  My strong desire to return to the university and finish my degree propelled me on yet another new path, back to the United States where I entered Arizona State University as a non-traditional student. 

When I finished my undergraduate degree, I knew I wanted to teach and do research drawing on my Hebrew skills and great love of religious studies and history.  Of the programs I applied to, I was drawn to the University of Michigan.  Jewish historian Todd Endelman, an expert in Anglo-Jewish identity, was much impressed with the comparative research I had conducted on an Anglo-Jewish writer Israel Zangwill and the African American writer W.E.B. DuBois, scholarship carried out under the auspices of a Younger Scholars Grant from National Endowment for the Humanities.   What a thrill it was to receive Professor Endelman’s call!  Off I went to Ann Arbor!  While at Michigan, I worked closely with other professors, in particular, the German historian Professor Geoff Eley, the Italian historian Professor Raymond Grew, a Risorgimento scholar of note, and the French historian Professor David Bien, a scholar of the revolutionary period and close friend of Francois Furet.  However, it would be a chance meeting with visiting scholar Dan Vittorio Segre, an Italian Jewish writer who would eventually influence my graduate work perhaps more more than anyone else.  With Professor Segre’s encouragement I began to craft a dissertation proposal on the history of Italian Jewish communities in the 19^th century and their role in the Italian national movement, the Risorgimento.   At the same time, I improved my Italian, enrolling in courses and visiting Italy in the summers.   After two years at Michigan, however, I had to make an urgent personal decision when I received the news that my father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.  I returned to Arizona to help my mother, leaving Michigan with a M.A in Jewish History. There was no doubt in my mind that I had to be there to help my mother cope with my father’s debilitating disease.  My academic career would have to be out on hold.  

After a year teaching at a Jewish parochial school in (THA) Tucson, close family friend and spiritual advisor, the late Rabbi Joseph Weizenbaum encouraged me to apply to the doctoral program in History at the University of Arizona.   In my first semester, Professor Hermann Rebel asked me if I would like to be his student. We discussed our common interests while I was his student in an introductory course on historiography.  From that moment, I found the mentor who would change my life intellectually and as a teacher. Indeed under the guidance of this German scholar, I had found my doktor fater.  Professor Rebel, a historian and anthropologist, opened me to new ways of reading and writing comparatively, to the then emerging field of world history, and, perhaps more than anything else to designing winning research proposals.  Under Professor Rebel’s guidance, I was awarded numerous research grants including a Fulbright Hays fellowship to study in Italy.  His influence left its mark on my ways of thinking in ways I cannot begin to describe.  I can only say how lucky I have been to be his student, an intellectual pedigree that goes back to Hans Rosenberg and Leopold von Ranke.      

Scholarship transformed me in so many ways.  During my Fulbright year I lived in a convent in Turin.  In Italy, students and travellers often find lodgings in convents.   My experiences with the elderly Piedmontese women living in the convento of Sant'Anna influenced my worldview as much as doing research in the State Archives shaped my future dissertation topic.  When I returned to Tucson, Professor Rebel urged me to apply for other grants. I was much delighted to receive the good news that I had been accepted as a fellow at the Institute for Historical Research in London where I gained yet another mentor, Italian Risorgimento scholar Professor Lucy Riall.  The year I spent with Professor Riall helped me craft a dissertation on Jewish corporate politics in Piedmont that spoke to key problems in the origins of Italian nationalism by considering the tensions between the Savoyard rulers neo-absolutist policies toward Jewish communities and the economic and social realities that was post-Napoleonic Piedmont.  My archival research on the petitions from members of the Jewish community to circumvent laws imposed on them, and the opinions of the civil servants who read them, proved a rich mine of information on Piedmont’s progressive turn, giving impetus to an alternative subaltern reading of the history of the Risorgimento.  Understanding the relationship between the Jewish community and the emergence of Italian nationalism in Piedmont would help explain why the most conservative of Catholic regimes would not only rally behind the Risorgimento, but also lead the wars for Italian unification.  The late Professor Lenard Berlanstein of the University of Virginia was so impressed with my research; he offered me the opportunity to interview for a position in History there in 2005. 

I received other grants during my graduate career.  A grant to Venice under the auspices of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation gave me the chance to do research in the Venetian archives and participate in Foundation events.  However, my experiences would be bittersweet since in the same year, my father died. Learning of his death in early March, the poignant sadness of it all in dark dreary Venice, that I shall never forget.  Amos Luzzatto, the head of the Jewish community in Italy and his wife Laura Voghera became good friends the year I lived there, offering me hospitality and later comfort, which I will be ever grateful for.  Before I returned home, my mentor Professor Rebel guided me in applying for a Marshall fellowship to complete the writing of my dissertation and which was awarded to me the following year.  By January 2004, I had defended my dissertation, receiving the highest honors from the committee that included my mentor, Professor Rebel, Professors Richard Cosgrove, Matt Goldish, and Linda Darling.  

The academic interview process proved to bring me close to finding possible positions at the University of Virginia, the University of Oklahoma, and Oregon State.   However, after six months into the interview process, my life changed abruptly when my mother suffered a serious health setback.   It was at this time, to the dismay of my mentors that I had to stop the job search outside Tucson and pursue employment as an adjunct lecturer.   Since then I have developed courses in Judaic Studies and History and now, quite proudly, for the French and Italian department.   Teaching has and continues to give me great satisfaction and students respond in kind as my evaluations have shown.  Since 2008, I embraced the online revolution, learning about and developing new skills in creating and instructing online courses.  In 2013, I received a grant from the Office of Instruction and Assessment to create online courses. I continue to gain as much knowledge as I can to improve my courses whether hybrids, fully online or face-to-face modalities.  

In recent years, I found my niche developing innovative General Education curriculum as well as being instrumental in seeing that both units I work successfully transitioned courses to the new perspective-taking General Education approach. My mentors in French and Italian encouraged to create a number of General Education courses that have become some of the most popular in the university such as FREN/ITAL 231 Fashion and Culture in France and Italy. Similarly, I have been designated the point person to help other faculty successfully design and propose new courses in Judaic Studies.  As a career-track lecturer in Judaic Studies and French and Italian, I have dedicated my life to fostering a deep understanding of culture, history, and language. My work has always been rooted in a passion for teaching—whether in a large lecture hall, more intimate classroom setting or online. I take immense pride in my ability to adapt and teach any course assigned to me, viewing each new challenge as an opportunity to connect with students in meaningful ways.

One of the defining aspects of my career has been my commitment to innovation in curriculum design. I’ve earned a reputation for crafting interdisciplinary courses that bridge Judaic Studies with the intricacies of French and Italian literature and culture such as FREN/ITAL 150B1 The Holocaust in France and Italy, ITAL 140, Magic, Science and Religion in Italy.  These courses not only challenge conventional boundaries but also invite students to engage with complex ideas in ways that are both rigorous and inspiring. Seeing students light up with understanding or discover a new perspective is the ultimate reward for my efforts. Through my teaching, I hope to have ignited in others the same passion for inquiry and discovery that has defined my own journey. This is the legacy I aim to leave behind: one of transformative education that transcends the classroom and continues to resonate in the lives of my students.

Beyond the classroom, my reputation extends to the broader academic community through my position as an editor of the Religious Studies Review at Rice University, where my review articles have been recognized and respected as an integral part of the journal. 

Twenty years have past since I defended my dissertation on the emancipation of Jewish communities in modern Itay and even though I did not pursue the tenure track, I hope my collegues will regard me as having contributed significantly to the development of undergraduate education at our University. I am immensely proud to be affiliated with the University of Arizona and the departments that I work for and look forward to inspiring students in the future. 

Degrees

• Ph.D. History (Modern Europe and Jewish)
• The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
• Between Ghetto and State: Religious Policy, Liberal Reform and Jewish Corporate Politics in Piedmont, 1821-1831
• M.A. HIstory (Jewish)
• The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
• n/a
• B.A. English
• Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
• Graduated summa cum laude

Awards

• Fulbright Hays Fellowship
• Fulbright, Fall 1999 (Award Finalist)
• Council for European Studies Grant
• Council for European Studies, Summer 1998 (Award Finalist)
• Outstanding Teaching Assistant for SBS
• The University of Arizona, Spring 1998 (Award Finalist)
• Orla B. Taylor Fellowship
• The University of Michigan, Fall 1994 (Award Finalist)
• Margaret Dow Towsley Scholarship
• The Center for Education for Women at the University of Arizona, Spring 1994 (Award Finalist)
• OIA Grant
• The University of Arizona Office of Instruction and Assessment, Winter 2014 (Award Finalist)
• Louise Foucar Marshall Dissertation Grant
• The University of Arizona, Spring 2003 (Award Finalist)
• Mellon Fellowship
• Institute for Historical Research at University College, London UK, Fall 2002 (Award Finalist)
• Gladys Krieble Delmas Fellowship
• Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Summer 2002 (Award Finalist)