In the second Faculty Seminar of the fall semester, Professor Artur Or-Honig presented his paper, “Processes Leading to a Tragedy: An Exploration of the Social and Economic Processes Inside Israel that Led to the October 7th Devastating Surprise Attack.” His presentation prompted a lively and thoughtful discussion among faculty and participants.
On November 6, Professor Natalia Aleksiun participated in a panel discussion at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London. The event was held as the inaugural Eva Reichmann Lecture, organized by the Leo Baeck Institute, London to honor the legacy of Dr. Eva Reichmann, a pioneering historian whose groundbreaking work continues to shape our understanding of […]
On November 5, the Shorstein Center welcomed Dr. Stacey Pierson, Professor of the History of Chinese Ceramics at SOAS, London. Attendees filled the Price Judaica Suite to the brim. Pierson shared her research about the fascinating life of Sir Percival David, a Baghdadi Jewish philanthropist and collector of Chinese ceramics whose legacy connects Mumbai to […]
Professor Gayle Zachmann presented at the 51st Annual Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium. Her presentation, “Zadoc Kahn’s Literary Bet: Literature, History, and Legacy” addressed the published sermons and legacy of the Chief Rabbi of France, Zadoc Kahn (1839-1905).
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On November 3, Professor Natalia Aleksiun joined UF’s AEPhi chapter to conclude the sorority’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month programming. In her talk, she explored the history medical professionals’ interest in hereditary breast cancer, with a focus on Jewish physicians’ engagement with heredity among Jews. She also highlighted the pioneering roles Jewish women have played in […]
On November 2, Professor Or Honig presented a paper at the Association for Middle East and Africa in Washington, D.C. titled, “Out of Her League: How Israel Avoided a Direct Military Clash with Rival Great Powers.” The Association for Middle East and Africa was established as an alternative to the highly politicized Middle East Studies Association (MESA) to […]
Professors Yaniv Feller & Rachel Gordan recently presented at the international conference “Transatlantic Jewish Publishing: The Legacy of Schocken books” from October 8 to 10, which took place at the German Literary Archive in Marbach am Neckar, Germany. Professor Feller presented his paper “Paperback Judaism” while Professor Gordan presented her paper “The 1940s-1950s Opening of […]
On October 23, 2025, Professor Natalia Aleksiun participated in a workshop and panel discussion titled “Secrets and Sources,” organized by the Anne Tannenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. Hosted by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, the event brought together scholars to discuss how Holocaust researchers address silences, […]
On October 29, Professor Rachel Gordan gave a zoom talk about the acclaimed movie Gentleman’s Agreement to the “Religion in American Public Life” course at the University of Rochester, taught by Professor Dan Gorman.
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A new article by Prof. Raanan Rein, “Argentine Football and the Failed Struggle against Discrimination”, recently published in Emma Poulton (ed.), Antisemitism in Football: International Perspectives, Routledge 2025. Vol. 19 in his book series Jewish Latin America was just published: Jewish Latin American Artists: Perspectives from the Global South, edited by Laura Rachel Felleman Fattal […]
From October 20th to 22nd, Professor Yaniv Feller participated in the Forum on Jewish-Muslim Thought and Theology’s annual conference at the University of Vienna, which focused on Crisis, Critique, and Self-Criticism. In his paper titled “Museums as Sites of Critique and Self-Critique”, Feller examined how museum exhibitions have faced criticism both from external observers and […]
On October 23, 2025, Professor Natalia Aleksiun participated in a workshop and panel discussion titled “Secrets and Sources,” organized by the Anne Tannenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. Hosted by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, the event brought together scholars to discuss how Holocaust researchers address silences, […]
Professor Raanan Rein of Tel Aviv University will join the Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies as the Alexander Grass Chair in Jewish Studies in August 2025.
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This week, Professor Roy Holler will present mutual research conducted with fellow Shorstein Center Professor Iris Cohen at the 41st Annual Conference of the Association of Israel Studies, held at the University of Haifa. The Association for Israel Studies conference is the world’s leading scholarly gathering on Israel, bringing together researchers and educators from around […]
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Dr. Natalia Aleksiun, the Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies and Interim Director of the Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies, will deliver the keynote address this week at the distinguished international conference Year Zero: The Experience of 1945 – Endings, Transformations, and Renewal, held in Vienna. The lecture, entitled “When the Great Day Comes: Polish […]
During the 2024-25 academic year, Prof. Natalia Aleksiun (the Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies in UF’s Shorstein Center) will hold the Dalck and Rose Feith Family Fellowship at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania. The Katz Center is one of the world’s most prestigious research centers in the field of Jewish studies.
Professor Yaniv Feller, a professor of Judaism and Modern Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies, has published a new book titled Covenantal Thinking: Essays on the Philosophy and Theology of David Novak with the University of Toronto Press.
Dr. Armin Langer, an associate at the Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies, has published two recent articles on antisemitism and extremism. The first, “Antisemitic Myths on the Web Amidst Global Crises of the Early 2000s,” is part of a research study by the European Institute for Counter Terrorism and Conflict Prevention (EICTP) that covers […]
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Professor Rachel Gordan, the Bud Shorstein Professor for American Jewish Culture and Society in the Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies, has been honored with a fellowship at Harvard University for academic year 2024-25. It has been a fine year for Gordan. Her award-winning book ˆPostwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American appeared with Oxford University […]
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The Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies is proud to announce the appearance of Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American by Oxford University Press.
Our own Rachel Gordan and our own Yaniv Feller have both, BOTH, won the 2023 Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award of the Association for Jewish Studies, the premier academic organization in our field.
L-R: Yossi Turner (Israel Institute Visiting Professor), Yehoshua Ecker (Jews in Muslim Countries), Natalia Aleksiun (Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies), Roy Holler (Israel Studies, Hebrew Literature), Yaniv Feller (Modern Jewish Thought).
In 1948, when the cinematic version of her story, “Gentleman’s Agreement,” received the Oscar for best picture, Laura Z. Hobson was a 47-year-old, divorced, Jewish single mother living in Manhattan. The success of “Gentleman’s Agreement,” which was serialized in Cosmopolitan in 1946, published by Simon & Schuster in 1947 and produced as a film by […]
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Thanks to a recent endowment, the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida will become a world leader in researching and teaching one of history’s darkest moments. The Harry Rich Professorship in Holocaust Studies, created in 2020, will support a new faculty position in the field. The first chairholder will be NATALIA ALEKSIUN, a specialist in […]
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Mazel Tov to Rachel Gordan for the publication of her article, “The 1940s as the Decade of the Anti-Antisemitism Novel,” in the journal of Religion and American Culture published in June 2021. The abstract can be found here. A great way to start the new academic year!
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Oren Okhovat(opens in new tab), PhD candidate in the Department of History, won a Fulbright Fellowship to Spain. He will spend the 2019-2020 academic year in Seville conducting research in notarial records for his dissertation, “The Portuguese Jews and the Spanish Atlantic: Constructed Communities and Cultural Crossroads in the Seventeenth Century.”
Robert Kawashima has been appointed to an editorial committee, organized by the Society of Biblical Literature, under the auspices of the National Council of Churches, charged with updating the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the most widely used translation of the Bible in the English-speaking academic world.
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Gayle Zachmann has been awarded a Florence Gould Foundation grant to continue her annual Paris research workshop — “Cultural Production in Nineteenth-Century France” — at the Université Paris-Diderot, Paris 7. The workshop will take place June 2020.
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On March 5, 2020 Dragan Kujundžić will screen his new film “Sergei Shnurov and his Group Leningrad: A Window into Russian Rock Music,” at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies. In 2016, Sergei Shnurov and his group Leningrad released two now-famous video clips, “Exponat” and “V Pitere pit’”, which were […]
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