EDUCATION


Ph.D (2000, Columbia University), dissertation: "The Jews in the Legislation and the Teachings of the Catholic Church in Poland 1648-1772." Distinction. In 2001 awarded the Salo and Jeanette Baron Prize.
M.Phil. (1996, Columbia University)
M.A. (1994, Columbia University)
M.A. (1993, The Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland), cum laude, thesis: "The Bible: Its Mongolian Translation and the Hebrew Original"

PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS

Wesleyan University

    2011-present, Professor of History; the Jeremy Zwelling Professor of Jewish Studies

    2010-present, Director of Jewish and Israel Studies Program

    2010-2011, the Jeremy Zwelling Associate Professor of Jewish Studies

      2007-2011: Associate Professor of Historyfrom 2008 also Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies;

      2000-2007: Assistant Professor of History

2007-2008, Harvard University, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow

2002-2003, University of Pennsylvania, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, Adjunct Fellow

2002, Harvard University, Center for Jewish Studies, Harry Starr Fellow and Visiting Scholar

1999-2000, Columbia University, Columbia College, Preceptor of "Contemporary Civilization"

Fall, 1998, Fordham University, Department of History, Adjunct Instructor, "Introduction to the Middle Ages"

 

PUBLICATIONS
Books:

Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation (Harvard University Press,  2011).

Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pbk. 2009)

Reviewed in: American Historical Review, The AAR Journal, Slavic Review, Sixteenth Century Studies Journal, American Catholic Historical Review, Church History, East European Jewish Affairs, Gal-Ed, Jewish Quarterly Review, Religious Studies, Blackfriars Journal.

Coedited with Adam Teller, Polin: Social and Cultural Boundaries in Pre-Modern Poland, vol. 22, (Oxford:  Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010)


Articles:

"Crime and Sacred Spaces in Early Modern Poland," a chapter in a book Kommunikation durch symbolische Akte. Religi?e Heterogenit? und politische Herrschaft in Polen-Litauen [Communication through symbolic acts. Religious heterogeneity and political Rule in Poland-Lithuania], ed. Yvonne Kleimann (Franz Steiner Verlag: Stuttgart, Germany, 2010), 171-90.

With Adam Teller, "Introduction", Polin: Social and Cultural Boundaries in Pre-modern Poland, vol. 22, (Oxford:  Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010) 3-46.

"'There Should Be No Love between Us and Them': Social Life and the Bounds of Jewish and Canon Law in Early Modern Poland," in Polin: Social and Cultural Boundaries in Pre-modern Poland, vol. 22 (Oxford: Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization,2010), 249-270.

With Debra Kaplan (Yeshiva University), "Out of the (Historiographic) Ghetto: Jews and the Reformation," Sixteenth Century Journal 40 no. 2 (2009): 365-393.

"Negotiating the internal and the external, or on the contextualization of pre-modern Ashkenazi Jewry," a review essay on Joseph M. Davis, Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller: Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Rabbi in Jewish History 21 no. (2007): 217-232

With Edward Fram, "Apostasy, Fraud and the Beginnings of Hebrew Printing in Cracow," AJS Review 30 no. 1 (2006): 31-66 (available on JSTOR)

 "The Legend of Ger Zedek (Righteous Convert) of Wilno as Polemic and Reassurance," AJS Review 29 no. 2 (2005): 237-263 (available on JSTOR)

With Edward Fram, "Matai nosad ha-defus ha-`ivri be-Qraqov?" [Hebrew: When Did Hebrew Printing Begin in Cracow?], Gal-`Ed 20 (2005): 144-149

"Jewish Conversions to Catholicism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Jewish History 17 no. 3 (2003): 257-283

"Kilka uwag na temat podział? społecznych i religijnych pomiędzy Żydami i Chrześcijanami we wschodnich miastach dawnej Rzeczpospolitej" [Polish: Some Remarks on the Social and Religious Divisions between Jews and Christians in Eastern Towns of Premodern Poland], Kwartalnik Historii Żyd? [Quarterly of Jewish History, Warsaw, Poland] 207 no. 3 (September, 2003): 327-336

"Lost in Translation: The London Missionary Society and the Nineteenth Century Translation of the Pentateuch" in Biblical Translations in Context, ed. Frederick Knobloch (College Park: University of Maryland Press, 2002): 145-154

"Catholic Reform" in History of the Modern World (Tarrytown: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1999), vol. 2: Religion and Change in Europe

"Przemoc w stosunku do kobiet w Biblii hebrajskiej" [Polish: Violence against Women in the Hebrew Bible], Pełnym głosem (With Full Voice) 4 (1996): 71-88. Also translated into Slovak, "N?ilie p?han?na ?en?h v Biblii," Aspekt 2 (1997): 91-97.
Articles on Jewish communities around the world and Jewish rituals published regularly in Polish/Yiddish magazine Dos Yidishe Vort (1991-1993).

 

ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLES
The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe: articles: "Ger Zedek," "Katarzyna Malcherowa Weigel," "The Helicz Family," "The Ezofowicz Family," "Conversions," "Judaizers." (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

Article on the "Ritual Murder Accusation" for The Cambridge Dictionary of Jewish Religion, History, and Culture edited by Judith Baskin (Cambridge University Press, 2011)


SCHOLARSHIP IN PROGRESS

POPULAR VENUES

?Putting ?Blood Libel? in Historical Context,? Harvard University Press Blog, January 24, 2011: http://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2011/01/putting-palin-blood-libel-in-historical-context.html

BOOK REVIEWS

David Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000-1250 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); reviewed for Sixteenth Century Journal (in press).

David Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); reviewed for Journal of Modern History (in press)

David Frick, Wilnianie: Żywoty siedemnastowieczne (Warsaw: Studium Europy Wschodniej, 2008); reviewed for Harvard Ukrainian Studies (in press).

Jacqueline Glomski, Patronage and Humanist Literature in the Age of the Jagiellons (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2007); reviewed for The Sixteenth Century Journal (in press).

Edward Fram, My Dear Daughter: Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth-Century Poland (Hebrew Union College Press, 2007); reviewed for Canadian American Slavic Studies.

Kenneth Austin, From Judaism to Calvinism: The Life and Writings of Immanuel Tremellius (c. 1510-1580) (Ashgate, 2007); reviewed for The American Historical Review 114 no. 1 (2009): 202-3

Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen Burnett, eds., Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Brill, 2006); reviewed for H-Net: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=289371209479923

Dror Ze`evi, Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900 (University of California Press, 2006); reviewed for Sixteenth Century Journal 40 no. 3 (2009, Fall issue): 998-1000

J.L. Vives, De officio mariti, Introduction, Critical Edition, Translation and Notes, Edited by C. Fantazzi and C. Matheeussen. Translated by C. Fantazzi (Brill, 2006); reviewed for The Sixteenth Century Journal 40 no. 2 (2009): 490-1.

Dean Phillip Bell, Jews in the Early Modern World (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008); reviewed for Shofar: Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 2009: 152-155

Stephanie Siegmund, The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence (Stanford, 2006); reviewed for The Sixteenth Century Journal, 2007.

Anna Michałowska, Między demokracją a oligarchia: władze gmin żydowskich w Poznaniu i Swarzędzu [Polish: Between Oligarchy and Democracy: Jewish Communal Authorities in Poznań and Swarzędz] (Warsaw: Dialog, 2000); reviewed for Polin: The Shtetl: Myth and Reality, Studies in Polish Jewry (2004): 419-422.

Michael C. Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust, H‑Judaic, H‑Net Reviews, 1999, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=21916933606599

Dan Miron, A Traveler Disguised: The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century, H‑Judaic, H‑Net Reviews, 1997, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=14691869000964

 

AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS, and GRANTS


Fellowships:

2007-2008 Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University

2007 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship

2004-2005,YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New York), The Dina Abramowicz Emerging Scholar Fellowship

2003-2004,Yad Hanadiv/Berakha Foundation (Israel), Postdoctoral sabbatical fellowship

2003-2004, Lady Davis Fellowship Trust (Israel), Postdoctoral Fellowship at Hebrew University, Israel (declined; Yad Hanadiv/Berakha fellowship accepted) 

2003,The Koret Foundation (San Francisco), Jewish Studies Publication Prize for the manuscript published by Cambridge University Press as Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era

2002-2003, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (New York),The Ephraim Urbach Postdoctoral Fellowship

2002, Harvard University, Center for Jewish Studies, Harry Starr Postdoctoral Fellow in the topic "Popular Religion in Early Modern Times"

2000-2002, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (New York), Postdoctoral Fellowship

2000, American Academy for Jewish Research, Postdoctoral Fellowship (declined; position at Wesleyan University accepted)

1998-9, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (New York), Doctoral Fellowship

1997-8,Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (New York), Mark Uveeler Doctoral Fellowship

1997-8, Columbia University, Louise Hoffman Memorial Scholar

1994-8, Columbia University, President's Fellowship

1993-4, Columbia University, Richard Hofstadter Fellowship

1994-2000, Columbia University, Center for Jewish Studies Fellowship


Grants: 


2011, Wesleyan University, The Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs First (1740-1823) Fund

2010, Wesleyan University, Service Learning Initiative Grant to integrate a course in Jewish history with work on the Adath Israel Congregation Museum in Middletown

2010, Wesleyan University, Project grant in support of the book project "Networks of Power: Blood Libel and the Boundaries of Papal Authority."

2008, Wesleyan University, Project grant in support of research for the book project "From Bread to Blood, From Sin to Crime" (published as Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation)

2008, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, Institutional Grant supporting the Early Modern Workshop for the period from October 2009 to September 2010 (funds to support the participation of graduate students)

2008, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University, Summer Exploratory Workshop Grant in support of an interdisciplinary workshop on "Reading across Cultures: Jewish Book and Its Readers in the Early Modern Period" to be held at the Radcliffe Institute in the Summer of 2009.

2006, Wesleyan University, Center for Faculty Development grant for a joint project with Prof. Adam Teller "Polin: Borders and Boundaries in Jewish History in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania" and for the Early Modern Workshop

2006, Yeshiva University and University of Maryland, in support of the Early Modern Workshop to be held at Wesleyan University, August 20-22, 2006 

2006, Wesleyan University, Seed Grant in support of the Early Modern Workshop to be held at Wesleyan University, August 20-22, 2006 

2005-6, Wesleyan University, Project Grant 

2005, Wesleyan University, The Snowdon Fund Grant to support the conference "Women, Bodies, and Rituals" around an exhibition by an Israel artist Hagit Molgan in January 2006

2004, Wesleyan University, Mellon Center for Faculty Development grant for a joint project with Prof. Edward Fram of Ben-Gurion University: "Apostasy, Fraud and the Beginning of Hebrew Printing in Cracow"

2003, Mellon Workshop Grant in support of an international faculty workshop on early modern Jewish history held at Wesleyan University, August 23-26, 2004

2002-2003, Wesleyan University, Project Grant

2001-2002, Wesleyan University, Meigs Fund grant in support of research on "Crime and Punishment: Jewish-Christian Relations and Criminal Justice in Early Modern Poland"

 

PAPERS (Conference and Invited Talks)


2010, Boston College, "Re-thinking the "Golden Age" in Pre-modern Poland: "A State without Stakes"?" at a conference "Was there a golden age of Christian-Jewish relations?"

2009, Association for Jewish Studies, Contested Sacred Spaces: The Aftermath of the Expulsion of Jews from Bochnia, 1606"

2009, Brown University, "Politicizing Crime: Jews and Sacrilege in the Early Modern Period"

2009, Columbia University, "Robberies as Sacrilege: Jews and the Handling of Christian Sacred Objects"

2009, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, "The Historian and the Internet: The Early Modern Workshop as a Resource and Model for Scholarly Communication" (Geneva, Switzerland)

2009, Yale University, Yale Interdisciplinary Workshop in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Studies, "From Bread to Blood, From Sin to Crime: Sacrilege and Jews after the Reformation."  

2009, Duke University, Carolina Seminars: "The Politics of Sacrilege and the Jews in Post-Reformation Poland"

2008, Association for Jewish Studies, a presenter on a panel "Politicized Academe: The Reactions to Ariel Toaff's Pasque di Sangue and Other Treatments of the Blood Libel"

2008, Harvard University, Center for Jewish Studies and the Humanities Center, "Sacrilege and Host Desecrations: Politics and Power in Early Modern Poland," Leon I Mirell Lecture

2008, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, "Sacrilege": Jews, Crime, and Religious Boundaries in Early Modern Poland

2007, Center for Jewish History, "The Marketplace in History: Jews and Christians, and the Underworld" 

2007, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, "Tortured Witnesses: Judicial Violence and Justice in Early Modern Poland"

2007, University of Maryland (College Park), "Material Possessions and Religious Boundaries in Early Modern Poland" as part of the Early Modern Workshop (www.earlymodern.org) 

2007, Central European University, "Transnationalism and Jewish History: Premodern Cosmopolitans from Below" 

2006, Association for Jewish Studies, "From Infanticides and Accidents to Anti-Jewish Accusations: Ritual Murder in Context" 

2006, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, "Of Crime, Bleeding Hosts, and Historical Periodization"

2005, University of Kansas, The Hall Center for the Humanities, "Social Life and the Bounds of Jewish and Canon Law in Early Modern Poland" 

2005, World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, Israel), "Jewish Law and Canon Law: Dealing with the Other" 

2005, University of Maryland (College Park), "Law, Boundaries, and City Life in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania" as part of the Early Modern Workshop (www.earlymodern.org) 

2005, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, "Did the Counter Reformation Triumph in Poland? Methodological Remarks" [a talk distinct from similarly titled talks listed below] 

2005, Association for Jewish Studies, "Studying Early Modern Jewish History"  

2004, Wesleyan University, respondent to Daniel Boyarin in a symposium "Borders of Jewish and Christian Identity from Antiquity till Today"  

2004, Wesleyan University, "Anti-Jewish Accusations in Poland: A Medieval or Early Modern Phenomenon?" as part of the Early Modern Workshop (www.earlymodern.org) 

2004, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, "Did the Counter Reformation Triumph in Poland?"

2004, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, "Change of Attitudes toward Proselytes: The Tale of Ger Zedek of Wilno" (Early Modern Study Group). Also presented at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel in April 2004 and an early version "The Eighteenth-Century Legend of the Righteous Convert to Judaism [Ger Zedek] in Poland and Its Historical Context," presented at the University of Groningen, Holland in 2003 at an International Conference "Cultures of Conversion: Paradigms, Poetics and Politics" 

2003, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, "Law, Boundaries and Mutual Attitudes: Churchmen, Rabbis and the People in Early Modern Poland"

2002, Association for Jewish Studies, "Crossing the Social and Religious Boundaries: Christian Converts to Judaism in Early Modern Poland"  

2002, German Historical Institute (Warsaw, Poland), "Kilka uwag na temat podział? społecznych i religijnych pomiędzy Żydami i Chrześcijanami we wschodnich miastach dawnej Rzeczpospolitej" [Reconsidering Social and Religious Boundaries between Jews and Christians in the Eastern Territories of Premodern Poland] at an International Conference "Jews and Burghers in the Nobles' Republic"  

2002, European Association for Jewish Studies, "Jewish Conversions to Catholicism in Early Modern Poland" (Amsterdam). An earlier version presented at Wesleyan University in 2001.

2002, Harvard University, Center for Jewish Studies, "(Jewish) History from Crime: Beliefs, Boundaries and Power in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania"  

2000, Columbia University,

1999, Association for Jewish Studies, "The Counter-Image: Attitudes of Polish Jews toward the Catholic Church in Early Modern Poland"

1999, University of San Francisco, Swig Center for Jewish Studies, "Beyond Adversus Judaeos"

1998, Association for Jewish Studies, "Jews and Others in Polemical and Controversial Literature in Early Modern Poland" 

1998, American Catholic Historical Association, "Jews in the Official Documents of the Catholic Church in Poland (1648-1772)"  

1996, Western Jewish Studies Association, "The Chmielnicki Uprising: Perception of Causality, Kingship and Suffering in the Polish, Ukrainian and Hebrew Chronicles" 

1995, American Catholic Historical Associationn, "Jews within the Historiography of the Catholic Church in Poland"
 
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

2010-present, member of the editorial board of Polin 2009-present member of the editorial board of the Sixteenth Century Journal
2008-present Member of the AJS Review editorial board
2006-2007, Center for Online Judaic Studies, editor of the early modern section (with Miriam Bodian) 
2004-present, Co-founder, director, and editor of the Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History (www.earlymodern.org)  
2005, Consultant for a BBC documentary Unorthodox Vows on non-Orthodox marriages in Israel, produced/directed by Suzie Brown 
2002, Founder of the New England Regional Faculty Seminar in Jewish Studies  
Peer reviewer for Cambridge University Press, University of Wisconsin Press, the AJS Review, Jewish Social Studies, and Sixteenth Century Journal
 
UNIVERSITY SERVICE 

Committees: 
2010-present, Member Faculty Advisory Board to Center for Prison Education

2010-present, Member of the Middle Eastern Studies Certificate Program (2009-2010, Middle Eastern Studies Exploratory Committee)
2008-2011, Advisory Committee (promotion and tenure committee)
2008-present, Member of the Academic Technology Advisory Committee
2006-present, Member of the board of Wesleyan University?s Center for Faculty Career Development 
2006-2007, Member of the Pedagogical Renewal Committee
2006-2007, Member of the Information Technology Committee for Division II (social sciences)  
2004-2007, History Department, Honors Committee  
2006, Faculty participant in discussions on open curricula for the Teagle Foundation 
2005-2006, Ad hoc Educational Policy Committee workgroup on Information Literacy capability  ;
2004-2006, Academic Review Committee, a subcommittee of the Educational Policy Committee 
2004-2006, Faculty Committee on Rights and Responsibilities  
2003-2007, Faculty representative on the Student Judicial Board and Honor Board Panel at the Frosh Orientation, responsible for discussing plagiarism and academic dishonesty from a faculty perspective  
2002-present, History Department, faculty advisor to Historical Narratives, an undergraduate journal published by Wesleyan history majors
2002-2003, Faculty Mentor in the University Scholarship Program  
2000-present, Member of the Jewish and Israel Studies Certificate Program
 
Conferences and Talks Organized at Wesleyan University: 


Organized and raised funds for the sixth annual Early Modern Workshop entitled: Jewish Community and Identity, August 2011

Organized and raised funds for the third annual session of the "Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History" entitled "Gender, Family, and Social Structures" (August 2006) 

Conceived, raised funds, and organized the conference "Women, Bodies, and Rituals" to accompany an exhibition by an Israeli artist Hagit Molgan at the Zilkha Gallery (January 29, 2006); the event was covered by the Hartford Courant, January 27, 2006 and the Chicago Tribune, February 8, 2006. 

Conceived, raised funds, and organized a Mellon-funded international faculty workshop "Early Modern Jewries: Paradigms of Change" in August 2004 

"Studying Religion," Snowden Lecture Series: Advising Committee for History and Jewish Studies (2001-2002)
Brought over 20 speaker to campus (independent of the Early Modern Workshop). 
 

LANGUAGES

English, French, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Yiddish