Dr. Sarah Valente co-directs of the Sandra Kahn Wasserman Jewish Studies Center at CUNY's Baruch College in New York City. She teaches courses in Jewish Studies and English at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences.

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In Spring 2022, she served as the Marvin & Edward Kaplan Lecturer in Jewish Studies at CUNY's City College and taught a seminar at the YIVO Institute. To date, she have taught three hundred and eighty-seven graduate and undergraduate students.

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Drawing from her academic training at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies in Dallas, the Leo Baeck Summer University in Berlin, and the Arquivo Histórico Judaico Brasileiro in São Paulo, she teaches literature and history courses on topics related to Jewish Studies, Latin American Studies, and Holocaust Studies. Dr. Valente brings an interdisciplinary, multicultural, and multilingual approach to her research and teaching. Her research is at the intersection of Latin American and Jewish history, literature, and culture, with a focus on migration, translation, and memory. 

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From 2019 to 2021, she served as visiting assistant professor of Holocaust Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic confinement, she implemented creative ideas into podcasts to promote connection, engagement, and intellectual discussions of history, literature, and culture. Dr. Valente launched the Ackerman Center Podcast in April 2020 to discuss Holocaust-related topics, the Translating the World Podcast to promote writers and translators, and Poems with Sarah in July 2020 to share poetry and multilingual readings. The podcasts reached listeners in 35 countries.

 

As a graduate student, she was selected to be a Belofsky Fellow (2013-2018) at the Ackerman Center, where she completed her Ph.D. in History of Ideas under the supervision of the wonderful Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, Holocaust survivor and the founding director of the Holocaust Studies program at The University of Texas at Dallas.

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Aside from the joy she find in teaching and researching, Dr. Valente is most happy when spending time with her dear family, and playing the cello together with her sisters Rubia (violin), Junia (viola), and brother-in-law Fred (violin).