Visiting professor Kevin Ostoyich at C·A·P

Prof. Kevin Ostoyich from the US has been an associated fellow at C·A·P since June 2025. His main area of research is the interactive teaching of the Holocaust and the life stories of contemporary witnesses to younger generations. He has developed numerous theater and music projects together with young people / students in the US and Germany. He is currently pursuing several research and cultural projects. Among his activities, he is developing a new youth-orientated video game based on the story of a German Jewish toy maker.

While serving as an associated fellow at C·A·P, Ostoyich will work on various book projects (including Auf Wiedersehen: Two German Teenagers and the Second World War, One Family: Stories of Friendship and Healing Pertaining to the Holocaust, and Here Today and Gone Tomorrow: Refugee Stories from Shanghai); write multiple articles pertaining to the Holocaust; draft plays about the Shanghai Jewish refugees; curate a museum exhibition about fashion and espionage in Shanghai; prepare a German version of Lyrics and Laughter from Shanghai: A Relevant Cabaret with Historical Commentary; make a film titled The Toy Maker; interview Holocaust survivors; and deliver lectures on the Holocaust around the world.

Biography

Kevin Ostoyich received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is Professor of History at Valparaiso University, where he served as chair of the Department of History from 2015 to 2019, was the recipient of the Dixon W. and Herta E. Benz Fund for Faculty Support (an endowed position) from 2020 – 2022, and was bestowed the Excellence in Teaching Award for 2017-2018. He serves as the historian for the Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation. In this capacity, he writes articles about various objects from the Foundation's Holocaust Collection – one of the largest in the world. (To read his Spungen Foundation articles, see https://spungenfoundation.org.) He is also a non-resident fellow of the American-German Institute of Johns Hopkins University. (To read his AGI articles, see Kevin Ostoyich – AGI.) Ostoyich has previously served as a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg (global dis:connect) at LMU; the Eadington Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at LMU; a guest professor at the Institut für Bayerische Geschichte at LMU; a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at LMU; a senior fellow at the German Historical Institute Pacific Regional Office / University of California, Berkeley; a visiting professor for Shanghai University; and a visiting assistant professor at the University of Montana. In addition to penning many articles and book chapters, Ostoyich co-edited The History of the Shanghai Jews: New Pathways of Research (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and authored The German Society of Pennsylvania: A Guide to Its Book and Manuscript Collections (German Historical Institute, 2006). Ostoyich's work has led to two recent award-winning films: the documentary, Gary's Letter, and the filmed-play, Three Girls of Shanghai. In 2024, he curated the museum exhibition, "Sewing and Survival: Textile Histories of the Shanghai Jews," for the Staatliches Textil- und Industriemuseum Augsburg, and wrote the podcast episode, "Tiny Dancer: Tracing the Steps of Jackie Beer," for LMU. The podcast is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. He has written four plays with university students: Knocking on the Doors of History: The Shanghai Jews, which was most recently performed at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum in November 2024; Shanghai Carousel: What Tomorrow Will Be; The Singer of Shanghai, which was most recently performed in Augsburg in July 2024; and Lyrics and Laughter from Shanghai: A Relevant Cabaret with Historical Commentary, which premiered at Slippery Rock University (Slippery Rock, PA.) on May 7, 2025.