Samantha Pickette is a Ph.D. student and Dean’s Fellowship recipient in the American Studies program. In 2013, she earned her B.A. in History of Science with a minor in English from Harvard University. She received her Master’s in Journalism from BU College of Communication in 2015, where her Master’s thesis focused on the use of the Holocaust as a source of humor by Jewish comedians. While at COM, Samantha was selected to participate in the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) as a Journalism Fellow. For her doctoral research, Samantha is primarily interested in 20th century Jewish-American life, especially in the context of literature, film, television, music, and popular culture in general. She focuses on the ways in which American secularism and the desire for assimilation has affected American Jews and, conversely, the ways in which mainstream American culture has been influenced by American Jews. She is also interested in studying the Holocaust from the American perspective, looking both at Jews who were in America during the Holocaust and at survivors who immigrated to America after the war.