While researching the Jewish philosopher Hugo Bergmann in a New York City archive, professor of religious studies Miriam Dean-Otting decided to take a look at an unpublished memoir by Bergmann's first wife, Else Fanta. What she read-a rich, lively portrayal of European Jewry and Prague's intellectual life before World War I-captivated her.

With permission to translate and publish Fanta's memoir, Dean-Otting is developing a book that supplements the memoir with essays on Czech Jewry as well as women's and family issues. Meanwhile, she has written and delivered a paper on how memoirs can be used in the classroom to explore issues such as assimilation and religious identity.

"Students love the personal style" of memoirs and stories, says Dean-Otting. Whether she is teaching Judaism (her field of specialization) or a section of the introductory religion course, she finds that a variety of religious texts can be provocative and eye opening. Students delve into the drama of the Bible. They discover the power of Native American beliefs. They marvel at the parallels between Jewish and Hindu conceptions of the divine.

"In a lot of what I teach, I'm asking students to step out of their own world," says Dean-Otting. "That's not a bad definition of what a college education is all about."