Faculty and Staff


Tel:(415) 422-5167
pjbirnbaum@usfca.edu

Paula Birnbaum

Associate Professor

Paula Birnbaum is Associate Professor and Program Director of Art History/Arts Management in the Department of Art + Architecture. She will serve as Academic Director of the new Master of Arts Program in Museum Studies at USF beginning in August of 2013. Paula is a specialist in modern and contemporary art and holds a doctorate in Art History from Bryn Mawr College.

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Lee Bycel

Adjunct Professor

Lee is the rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom in Napa and a Senior Moderator at the Aspen Institute. He has devoted his life to a variety of social justice issues as a teacher, humanitarian and community leader. For fifteen years he was Dean of the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, where he was also Assistant Professor of Leadership and Applied Theology and served as the Smither Visiting Professor of World Religions at the Claremont School of Theology.

Tel:(415) 422-2378
ajhahntapper@usfca.edu

Aaron Hahn Tapper

Assistant Professor

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Francisco. His interdisciplinary interests are American Jews, American Muslims, comparative religions, history of religions, the interplay between politics and religion and the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Additionally, Professor Hahn Tapper recently co-edited the volume Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalities, Contentions, and Complexities. He is the Director and Chair of the SWIG Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice. Dr. Hahn Tapper earned his Ph.D. from University of California, Santa Barbara and came to USF in 2007.

Tel:415 422 2864
shhoelscher@usfca.edu

Susanne Hoelscher

Adjunct Professor

Adjunct Professor, is the MCL German Studies Coordinator. She received her Ph.D. in German Studies from the University of California, Davis, with an emphasis on issues of national and gender identities in post-wall Berlin literature and film. She has been teaching courses in German language and literature at USF since 2004, and has been pursuing research in both fields. She earned an M.A. in German Studies from San Francisco State University, and completed the Erste Staatsexamen at the Westfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster, Germany, majoring in Education with a focus on German Studies and History.    

Tel:(415) 422-6411
neamane@usfca.edu

Elliot Neaman

Professor

Elliot Neaman received a B.A. in sociology from the University of British Columbia in 1979, an M.A. in history and philosophy from the Freie Universität in Berlin in 1985 and his Ph.D. in history from Berkeley in 1992. His areas of specialization are Modern Germany, The Holocaust, Late Modern Intellectual History, post 1945 Global History, European Diplomatic & Economic History, and theory and methodology of the historical sciences. 

Tel:
aramer@usfca.edu

Andrew Ramer

Adjunct Professor

Andrew Ramer, an adjunct professor in the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, is also an ordained maggid (sacred storyteller) and the author of numerous books and articles including Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish Stories. His primary interests are in multifaith engagement, the sacredness of the body, and our connection to the Earth. He has just completed a lyrical, apocalyptic story-cycle, When People Still Lived on the Earth, about how human beings destroyed this lovely planet, and what happened to all of us in heaven, afterwards.

Tel:415 422 6650
skloot@usfca.edu

Esti Skloot

Adjunct Professor

Adjunct Professor, grew up in Israel where she studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and received her teacher's credentials from the Hebrew Teachers' Seminary. She received her BA in music from Sonoma State University, and her MA in creative writing at the University of San Francisco. Prof. Skloot also directs Ulpan San Francisco, an intensive three-week, multi-level Hebrew-immersion program that is offered to the community each summer.

Tel:(415) 422-6981
zunes@usfca.edu

Stephen Zunes

Professor

Stephen Zunes has been at USF since 1995, teaching courses on the politics of Middle East and other regions, nonviolence, conflict resolution, U.S. foreign policy, and globalization for the Politics department, the International Studies major, and the Peace & Justice Studies minor, as well as the Middle Eastern Studies minor, for which he serves as program director.