Christina Sztajnkrycer

Christina Sztajnkrycer

Assistant Teaching Professor of French and Francophone Studues
335 Burrowes Building

Fields

French language teaching and study abroad; nineteenth and early twentieth-century French and Francophone literature; architectural history of Paris; Jewish studies; history of Jews in France; North African Jewish history and culture; North African Jewish literature; Francophone Jewish women’s literature

Education

MA/PhD University of Washington

Professional Bio

Christina is a teacher of French language, literature, history, and civilization. She is an assistant coordinator in the Basic Language Program and will be leading the Intensive French Language and Cultural Immersion program in Besançon, France during the summer of 2024. She is also a scholar of nineteenth and early twentieth-century French and Francophone literature spanning. She is particularly interested in the representation of Jews in French novels of the nineteenth century and in the exploration of Jewish, North African, and French identities in the early twentieth-century novels and short stories of North African Jewish authors writing in French. She also works on various transcription and translation projects for scholars studying Francophone Jewish figures.

Recent Courses:

French 002

French 003

French 137

French 202

French 332

Publications:

“Traumatic Nostalgia for a place never known in Blanche Bendahan’s Mazaltob”: Manuscript under review for publication in the journal “The Spaces in Between: Literature and Culture from 1914-1945”; reviewed during the 2022 Penn State Rock Ethics Institute virtual summer symposium, August 4, 5 and 6, on the topic of The Ethics of Remembering and Re-membering Trauma.

“Heureux Comme un Juif en France” 2018 — 2019: Chapter in La France Contemporaine, directed by Dr. Michel Gueldry and Armelle Crouziers-Ingenthron, published in June 2020.

“From Rhodes to Racine: Why a Sephardic Teenager in 20th Century Paris Was Reading the 17th Century French Tragedy Esther” Spring 2017: With a grant from the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies I researched the use of Racine’s tragedy in the schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle; published on the Stroum Center Website.

“An Ottoman Jew in Paris: The Story of Moïse de Camondo and His Museum” Spring 2015: My article concerning the Camondo family in the Monceau neighborhood in Paris was published on the Stroum Center Website.

“How are Jews depicted in French Literature?” Winter 2015: This analysis of the Antiquaire character in Balzac’s Peau de chagrin was also published on the Stroum Center Website.