Professional Development Assignment (PDA) Final Report
Gene A. Plunka
Department of English
The Professional Development Assignment was for one semester (fall 2011). The
purpose of the PDA was to complete chapters six and seven of a book on Holocaust
drama. Specifically, this comparative drama study examined a variety of international
plays that focused on collective or individual defiance of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
My research went much better than I had expected. Chapter six concerned
resistance from the clergy and included analyses of Celester R. Raspanti’s No Fading
Star, Arthur Giron’s Edith Stein, and David Gooderson’s Kolbe’s Gift. Chapter seven
focused on America’s response to the genocide, using Susan Lieberman and Stephen J.
Morewitz’s Steamship Quanza as a vehicle to examine the Roosevelt administration’s
restrictive immigration policies that left many Jews stranded in Europe during the late
1930s and early 1940s. This chapter concerns the courage of admiralty lawyer Jacob L.
Morewitz (the playwright’s grandfather), who managed to use his legal skills to save
eighty-six European Jews from their deaths by influencing immigration laws created by
the Roosevelt administration. The argument that I made in this chapter is that the
courageous act of an individual led the way for what American politicians could have
done to save lives during the Holocaust.
The Professional Development Award allowed me to devote full-time to my
research. Thus, I finished chapters six and seven within two months and therefore was
able to complete the book by the end of fall 2011. The review process was completed
during January 2012. Although the referees made extensive comments with regard to the
content of the manuscript, I was able to make the revisions within three weeks. The
production process began shortly thereafter, and the book, Staging Holocaust Resistance,
was published in summer 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan. On the Acknowledgments page,
I mention that the PDA allowed me to finish writing and editing the manuscript.