Rachel Boaz

Dr. Rachel Boaz received a doctorate in history from Kent State University in 2009. With an emphasis on cultural and social history, she teaches courses on Medieval and Modern Europe, as well as World Civilization. Boaz has designed and instructed classes which examine critical developments in medical, legal, and criminal practices over time – such as the impact of pandemics (HIS 360 Plagues and Peoples), the systematic marginalization of others, and war crimes of the Third Reich (HIS 261 Hitler’s Germany), and the evolution of folkloric, forensic and therapeutic applications of blood (HIS 210 Blood in History: Medicine, Symbolism, and Culture). She applies this knowledge base in her teaching of HIS 201: A Global History of Science and Technology, for BW's nursing department.

She has published "In Search of the "Aryan Blood": Serology in Interwar and National Socialist Germany" (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2012), as well as a chapter entitled "Brothers in Arms"? Merkel’s Immigration Policies and the Americanization of German Gun Culture," in Understanding America’s Gun Culture, Craig Hovey and Lisa Fisher, eds. (Lexington Press, 2017).

Boaz has presented on her studies at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, and has contributed to local news segments on historical topics, including an interview on the "history of royal births," Good Morning Cleveland on News Channel 5, and "From the Black Death to Spanish Flu, how past pandemics have, and haven’t, informed our response to Coronavirus," Courtney Shaw, News 5 Cleveland, Nov. 10, 2020. Her primary research focus is now on the plans of Nazi fanatics to sabotage Allied occupation of Europe in the last stages of World War II.