Biography

Dr. Brian Crawford joined Touro Berlin in 2010, and serves as a member of the undergraduate faculty in both management and psychology, and as a faculty member in the M.A. program in Holocaust Studies/Tolerance Studies.  

Dr. Crawford hails originally from Richmond, Virginia, and received his B.A. in English from Brandeis University, where he graduated with High Honors. During his graduate studies, he received fellowships for graduate study at the Humboldt University in Berlin from the DAAD and from the Berlin Parliament. Dr. Crawford received his Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Irvine in 2004, where he also received a certificate in Critical Theory.  

Before arriving at Touro Berlin, Dr. Crawford served as a faculty member in the English department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and at Elon University. Before joining the faculty at Touro Berlin, Dr. Crawford laid the foundation for the Jewish Studies program at Elon University. 

At Touro Berlin, Dr. Crawford teaches in and coordinates the writing program, offering classes in college writing that include introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses in composition. Dr. Crawford also teaches literature courses in Touro Berlin’s undergraduate program, with American literature surveys and explorations of multicultural American literature, and specialty courses in poetry and in Jewish American fiction. 

In the Master’s program in Holocaust Studies / Tolerance Studies, Dr. Crawford teaches on the subject of trauma and Holocaust representation. His research focuses on contemporary Jewish American literary fiction, Jewish culinary writing, and representations of the Holocaust and post-Holocaust in fiction. His publications have appeared in journals such as Critique, and in collections of literary criticism.