Shana Bernstein has always loved school. "I would love to be a lifelong student — which is basically what I am as a professor." All throughout school she had part-time jobs tutoring, and, Bernstein says, "I was always motivated to learn more and love the feeling of helping someone else learn something new."

Bernstein was born in Germany — her father was in the Army — but she grew up in California. She has a younger brother and sister and, at one point, her family had seven cats and four dogs taking advantage of their house's big yard.

She attended The University of California at Berkeley and graduated with a B.A. in history and French, though, secretly, she really wanted to study everything. "Of course I couldn't study everything, so I decided on history, which seems to serve as an umbrella subject that encompasses a variety of disciplines." One of her fondest Berkeley memories is of her junior year spent studying abroad in France.

Before returning to school at Stanford for her M.A. and Ph.D., Bernstein took two years off to work at a law firm. She briefly considered a career in public interest law, but after spending time in the field decided she did not care for the environment surrounding law nor find the work as interesting as history.

Bernstein taught at Stanford and Northwestern, before moving to Austin to teach at Southwestern. She had visited friends in Austin prior to moving to Texas, and found that she really enjoyed the city. Says Bernstein, "I really liked Austin. The job fell right into place, and so in August I moved." Not being accustomed to the delightful Texas heat, the adjustment has taken some time, but Bernstein greatly enjoys both Austin and her new job.

Bernstein feels very strongly that, "My job as a responsible citizen is to share what I know about the past to help inform the present. I also love to talk about ideas." At Southwestern, she feels she will be able to do just that with her students. "I was an eight-digit student number at Berkeley. Here you can really work with and meet the students. You can learn with someone along the way, and I can go much more in depth as a teacher."

Currently, she is working on developing new courses for next semester and organizing her office. "I had to finish my postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern in August and move down here to start school right away, so things are still a little chaotic." Outside of class, Bernstein is working on Building Bridges in a Divided World: Interracial Civil Rights Cooperation in World War Two and Cold War Los Angeles, a book on civil rights. She has always been interested in race relations, in part because she grew up in a predominately white area. Her experience at Berkeley, however, was filled with diversity and further fostered this interest. Bernstein also is very diplomatic and interested in coalitions and how they work. These interests, along with the wonderful discovery of pertinent documents in Los Angeles, "opened up new doors" and steered her in the direction of her book now in progress.

Bernstein notes, "Research keeps me excited about the material. I might sound bored if I'm always talking about other peoples' material. It also keeps students up-to-date on how we view history." Though thoroughly engaged in getting a portfolio of classes set up and working on her book, she makes the most of the time she has to advise and talk with students as it is her favorite professional pastime. Bernstein also looks forward to finally getting her office organized and to simply enjoying the teaching of history.