Ariel Evan Mayse is PhD student in Jewish Studies at Harvard University's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He graduated from UC Davis 2007, with a BA in Jewish Studies and a History Minor, where his senior thesis was an intellectual biography of the Kotsker Rebbe, titled: "The Hammer of Solitude: Boundaries and Alienation in the Life of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgenstern of Kotsk." He is currently a William A. Ackman Fellow in Holocaust Studies for 2008-2009, researching conceptions of language and intertextuality in Eastern European Hasidic literature."