Bonnie M. Harris, Executive Administrator Western Jewish Studies Association
I am currently a PhD Candidate in the Public History program at UCSB. My academic field of study is Modern Jewish History, with an emphasis in Holocaust History and Memorialization. My doctoral dissertation will be the first academic study of the rescue of German refugee Jews from the Holocaust by the Jewish Community of Manila. In my MA program at SDSU, I wrote my Master’s Thesis on the Form and Function of Temple Architecture in the ancient Near East and taught Ancient Near Eastern History at SDSU before entering my PhD program at UCSB. In my BA program in Humanities at SDSU, I graduated Magna cum laude with distinction in the Major. I assisted in the operation of the Jewish Studies Department at San Diego Sate University in association with Dr. Lawrence Baron, then Director of the Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies. I am employed by the Jewish Historical Society of San Diego as their senior archivist and I volunteer as an instructor at the San Diego Institute of Religion for the L.D.S. Church, where I have written and taught curriculum in Old Testament and New Testament studies. I am currently teaching Early World History and Ancient Western History at Grossmont College in El Cajon, CA. I have been happily married to the same man for 30 years, my husband Scott Harris. We have three adult children, Annie, Bonnie Jean, and Jennie, and a 3 year old granddaughter, Angela.