Joanne Strasser

Joanne Strasser is a PhD candidate in Antisemitism Studies at Gratz College whose work advances a dual-structure model of antisemitism as a durable interpretive system operating across academic, cultural and political domains. Her research examines how antisemitic meanings are stabilized prior to encounter, shaping institutional practice, scholarly discourse and Jewish experience in contemporary public life.

Her scholarly interests include contemporary antizionism, left-wing German student movements of the 1970s, German and Soviet political history and the psychosocial adaptations formed under conditions of chronic misrecognition. She is particularly concerned with the ways antisemitism persists within intellectual environments that understand themselves as emancipatory or anti-racist, and with the implications of this persistence for scholarship, pedagogy and academic freedom.

She holds an M.A. in Sociology from The New School for Social Research and a B.A. in German and Russian Languages and Literature from Brandeis University. Her work draws on interdisciplinary methods spanning sociology, history, psychoanalytic theory and narrative analysis, and is informed by extensive research experience in Germany and the post-Soviet space, including work with German- and Russian-language sources.