The Jewish Studies Program ensures that the richness of Jewish culture and its impact on civilization are vigorously presented to the Cornell community. The program offers training in the languages, literature, and history of the Jewish people, as these developed across the globe and over thousands of years. It also focuses on the tense and productive relation between Jews and their various others. Jewish studies course offerings cover Jewish civilization from its ancient Near Eastern origins through its contemporary history. The program is interdisciplinary, and serves as a common address for faculty from an array of departments, such as Near Eastern studies, English, history, anthropology, German studies, government, comparative literature, and linguistics.

The Jewish Studies Program offers a minor, and provides instruction and specialization in the fields of Semitic languages; the Hebrew Bible; medieval and modern Hebrew literature and film; ancient, medieval and modern Jewish history; Holocaust Studies; Jewish ethnography; and Yiddish culture.

Department website

Lauren Monroe

Associate Professor

Publications

  • 2008    Review of K. van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
  • 2007    “A Holiness Substratum in the Deuteronomistic Account of Josiah’s Reform,” in M. Leuchter, ed., Scribes Before and After 587 BCE: A Conversation (Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 7; 2007) 42-53.
  • 2006    "Israelite, Moabite and Sabaean War-herem Traditions and the Forging of National Identity: Reconsidering the Sabaean Text RES 3945 in Light of Biblical and Moabite Evidence," Vetus Testamentum 57 (2007) 318-341.
  • 2005    Review of Boyd Barrick, The King and the Cemeteries: Towards a New Understanding of Josiah's Reform, Revue Biblique (2005) 417-425.
  • 1999    With Baruch Levine, “KTU 2.40: A mšr for the Sons and Daughters of Ugarit,” Revue Biblique 106/3 (1999) 321-344. 

Mostafa Minawi

Associate Professor of History and the Director of Critical Ottoman & Post-Ottoman Studies

Publications

Books

Osmanlılar ve Afrika Talanı:Sahra'dan Hicaz'a İmparatorluk ve Diplomasi (Istanbul: Koc University Press, 2018).

The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz (Stanford, CA. Stanford University Press, 2016).

 Losing Istanbul: Arab-Ottoman Imperialists and the End of Empire (Stanford University Press, late 2022) 

 Ottoman-Ethiopian Relations and the Geopolitics of Imperialism in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea Basin (In progress – Under contract with Stanford University Press).

Some Peer-Reviewed Articles

  • “International Law and the Precarity of Ottoman Sovereignty in Africa at the End of the 19th Century,” The International History Review (May 2020) <DOI:10.1080/07075332.2020.1765837>
  • “Telegraphs and Territoriality in Ottoman Africa and Arabia During the Age of High Imperialism,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 18 (2016): 576-587.
  • “Beyond Rhetoric: Reassessing Bedouin-Ottoman relations along the route of the Hijaz Telegraph Line at the end of the nineteenth century,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58 (1-2) (2015): 75–104.

Sample Newspaper Op.Eds.

Marilyn Migiel

Professor of Romance Studies, Kappa Alpha Professor in Literature

Publications

Books

  • Veronica Franco in Dialogue (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022), recipient of the MLA’s 2021 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Prize for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies
  • The Ethical Dimension of the “Decameron”  (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), recipient of the MLA’s 2016 Howard R. Marraro Prize for outstanding scholarship in Italian.
  • A Rhetoric of the “Decameron” (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), recipient of the MLA’s 2004 Howard R. Marraro Prize for outstanding scholarship in Italian.
  • Gender and Genealogy in Tasso’s “Gerusalemme Liberata” (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993).

Edited volume

  • Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance, eds. Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).

Essays

  • “What Can a Maidservant Do for You? Answers from the Men and Women of Boccaccio’s Decameron.” Rivista di Letteratura Tardogotica e Quattrocentesca 5 (January 2023): 139-51.
  • "In Boccaccio We Trust?" MLN 134 (January 2019): 1-21.
  • "Tests and Traps in Boccaccio's De casibus virorum illustrium." Heliotropia 15 (2018): 253-66.
  • "Reading the Decameron with Matteo Bandello: Novella 2.24." Spunti e ricerche 32 (2017): 141-51.
  • “Boccaccio and Women,” in The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, eds. Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels, and Stephen J. Milner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 171-84.
  • “New Lessons in Criticism and Blame from the Decameron.”  Heliotropia  7:1-2 (2010): 5-30.
  • “The Untidy Business of Gender Studies: Or, Why It’s Almost Useless to Ask if the Decameron is Feminist,” in Boccaccio and Feminist Criticism, eds. Thomas C. Stillinger and F. Regina Psaki (Chapel Hill: Annali d’Italianistica, 2006), 217-33.

Kim Haines-Eitzen

Paul and Berthe Hendrix Memorial Professor

Publications

Books and Edited Works

  • Sonorous Desert: What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks and What It Can Teach Us (Princeton University Press, 2022)
  • The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2012).
  • Boundaries and Bodies in Late Antiquity, co-edited with Georgia Frank, special issue of The Journal of Early Christian Studies 17 (2009).
  • Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (Oxford University Press, 2000).

Selected Articles

  • “The Sound of Angels’ Wings in Paradise: Religious Identity and the Aural Imagination in the Testament of Adam,” in Jews and Christians in the Greco-Roman World
  •   “Geographies of Silence,” in Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perceptions in Byzantium
  • "The Future of Patristics," in Blackwell Companion to Patristics
  • "The Social History of Early Christian Scribes," in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research
  • “Imagining the Alexandrian Library and a ‘Bookish’ Christianity,” in Reading New Testament Papyri in Context
  • “Textual Communities in Late-Antique Christianity” in A Companion to Late Antiquity
  • "Engendering Palimpsests: Reading the Textual Tradition of the Acts of Paul and Thecla," in The Early Christian Book
  • “The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles on Papyrus: Revisiting the Question of Readership and Audience,” in New Testament Manuscripts: Their Texts and Their World
  • “Ancient Judaism Imagined Through the Lens of Early  Christianity: The Work of James Rendel Harris, 1852-1941,” in Studies and Texts in Jewish History and Culture.
  • “‘Girls Trained in the Art of Beautiful Writing’: Female Scribes in Roman Antiquity and Early Christianity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies

David M Feldshuh

Professor

Molly Diesing

Professor

Publications

(to appear) “Scrambling and object shift in Yiddish” to appear in Handbook on the syntax of Germanic languages De Gruyter.

Diesing, M., & Santorini, B. (2022). On the Symmetry of V2 in Yiddish and Some of Its Consequences for Extraction. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 34(2), 186-208. doi:10.1017/S1470542721000131

Diesing, M., and Santorini, B. (2020) 'The scope of embedded Verb Second in modern Yiddish', in Rebecca Woods, and Sam Wolfe (eds), Rethinking Verb Second (OUP),  https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198844303.003.0028

Diesing, M., & Zec, D. (2017). Getting in the first word: Prosody and predicate initial sentences in Serbian. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2(1), 24. DOI:http://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.204

(2015) Uticaj sintakse i prozodije na mesto enklitika u rečenici (The effect of syntax and prosody on enclitic position in the sentence) in Srpski jezik u savremenoj lingvističkoj teoriji (Serbian Language in Contemporary Linguistic Theory) ed. by Boban Arsenijević and Sabina Halupka Rešetar. (with Draga Zec)

(2011)  Interface Effects: Serbian Clitics.  in Jeffrey Runner (ed.) Experiments at the Interfaces, Syntax and Semantics Volume 37, Emerald, (with Draga Zec), 1-30.

(2009)   Clitic placement in Serbian:  Corpus and experimental evidence. In  Featherston, Sam and Susanne Winkler (eds) Proceedings from Linguistic Evidence 2008 Mouton de Gruyter, 61-76. [with Dušica Filipović-Djurdjević and Draga Zec]

(2005) "Some Remarks on Fox and Pesetsky: Cyclic Linearization of Syntactic Structure. Theoretical Linguistics 31.1, 127-136.

(2005) "The Upper Functional Domain in Yiddish", in Werner Abraham (ed.) Focus on Germanic Typology. [Studia Typologica 6] Berlin Akademieverlag, 195-209.

(2003) "On the Nature of Multiple Fronting in Yiddish", in Cedric Boeckx and Kleanthes Grohman (eds.) Multiple Fronting, John Benjamins, 51-76.

(2003) "Multiple Multiple Questions", in Andrew Carnie, Heidi Harley and Mary Willie (eds.) Formal Approaches to Function in Grammar, John Benjamins, 135-153.

(2000) "Aspect in Yiddish The Semantics of an Inflectional Head", Natural Language Semantics. 8.3, 231-253.

(1999) "Comments on Cardinaletti and Starke." In Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.) The Typology of European Languages, Volume 8: Clitics in the Languages of Europe. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin 243-249.

(1998) "Light Verbs and the Syntax of Aspect in Yiddish", The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 1.2, 119-156.

(1997) "Yiddish VP Order and the Typology of Object Movement." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15.2, 369-427.

(1996) "Semantic Variables and Object Shift." In S. D. Epstein and H. Thráinsson (eds.) Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax, Volume II (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 66-84.

(1995) "Distributing Arguments." [with Eloise Jelinek] Natural Language Semantics 3.2, 123-176.

(1992) Indefinites. The MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 20).

(1990) "Verb Movement and the Subject Position in Yiddish," in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8.1, 41-79.

Ross Brann

Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Middle Eastern Studies & Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow

Publications

  • Moses Maimonides: A  Very Short Introduction (in press, Oxford University Press, 2024)
  • Iberian Moorings: al-Andalus and Sefard and the Tropes of Exceptionalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) 240 pp.
  • “Hebrew Poetics, and Linguistic Thought,” to appear in The Cambridge History of Rhetoric (General Editors, Rita Copeland and Peter Mack)
  • “Medieval Jewish Translingualism,” in The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism (2021), ed. Natasha Lvovitch and Steven G. Kellman, pp.85-96
  • “Andalusi Hebrew Poetry and the Arabic Poetic Tradition,” Routledge Companion to Arabic Poetry, ed.
    Huda Fakhreddine and Suzanne Stetkevych (London: Routledge, 2023), 108-130.
  • Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Muslims and Jews in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 208 pp. 
  • The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 228 pp. [recipient of the 1992 Maurice Amado Foundation National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Studies]
  • [Ed. with Adam Sutcliffe] Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From Al-Andalus to the Haskalah (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) 237 pp.
  • “Arabic Alongside and into Hebrew: Andalusi Hebrew Literature in Meta-Critical Perspective,” The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iberia: Unity and Diversity, ed. E Michael Gerli (Routledge, 2021), 363-374
  • "An Aramaic Writ from Ramla (1056): A Translation and Genizah Study" in Text, Tradition and the History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Lawrence Schiffman Festschrift), ed. Stuart Miller (Brill, 2020), 245-253.
  • “Jewish Perceptions of and Attitudes towards Muslims,” in Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 5 [Jews and Judaism in the Islamic World, Seventh through Fifteenth Centuries], ed. Philip Lieberman (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 64-91.
  • “The Moors?” Medieval Encounters 15 (2009): 307-318.
  • “He Said, She Said: Re-inscribing the Andalusi Arabic Love Lyric,” in Raymond P. Scheindlin Festschrift, ed. M. Rand and J. Decter (Piscataway NJ: Gorgias Press, 2007), 7-15.
  •  “Rule (’Amīnūkāl)”], Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 5 (2013): 106-110.
  • "Andalusi "Exceptionalism"," in A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, ed. Karla Mallette and Suzanne Akbari (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013) 119-134.

Jonathan Aaron Boyarin

Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies

Publications

book

K.E. von Wittelsbach

Senior Lecturer of Italian Language and Romance Studies; Director, Cornell-in-Turin Summer Program in Modern European Politics

Caitie Barrett

Associate Professor

Publications

MONOGRAPHS

  • Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (2019). Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. [430 pp. + 100 figures]
  • Egyptianizing Figurines from Delos: A Study in Hellenistic Religion (2011). Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 36. Leiden/Boston: Brill. [731 pp. + 80 plates]

EDITED VOLUMES

  • Figurines grecques en contexte: Présence muette dans le sanctuaire, la tombe et la maison (2015), eds. S. Huysecom-Haxhi and A. Muller (editors-in-chief) and C. Aubry, C. Barrett, C. Blume, and T. Kopestonsky (collaborating editors). Archaiologia. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. [534 pp.]

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

  • "Magical Gems as Material Texts" (forthcoming). In Textual Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: Are We Doing It Wrong?, ed. Y. Heffron. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. 
  • "The Valuation of Terracotta Figurines in Domestic Contexts: Reconsidering the Gap between Material and Ritual" (forthcoming). In Stuff of the Gods: The Material Aspects of Religion in Ancient Greece, eds. M. Haysom, M. Mili, and J. Wallensten. Athens: Swedish Institute at Athens.
  • "Recontextualizing Nilotic Scenes: Interactive Landscapes in the Garden of the Casa dell’Efebo, Pompeii.” American Journal of Archaeology 121: 293-332[40 pp.]
  • "Egypt in Roman Visual and Material Culture" (2017). In G. Williams (ed.), Oxford Handbooks Online in Classical Studies. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. (http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935390.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935390-e-18) [43 pp.]
  • "Archaeology of Ancient Religions" (2016). In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, eds. J. Barton et al. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. (http://oxfordre.com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-48) [24 pp.]
  • "Avant-propos" (with C. Aubry, C. Blume, S. Huysecom-Haxhi, T. Kopestonsky, and A. Muller) (2015). In Figurines grecques en contexte: Présence muette dans le sanctuaire, la tombe et la maison, eds. S. Huysecom-Haxhi et al., 7-9. Archaiologia. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. [3 pp.]
  • "Terracotta Figurines and the Archaeology of Ritual: Domestic Cult in Greco-Roman Egypt" (2015). In Figurines grecques en contexte: Présence muette dans le sanctuaire, la tombe et la maison, eds. S. Huysecom-Haxhi et al., 401-420. Archaiologia. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. [20 pp.]
  • "Harpocrates on Rheneia: Two Egyptian Figurines from the Necropolis of Delos" (2015). In Figurines de terre cuite en Méditerranée orientale grecque et romaine. II: Iconographie et contextes, eds. E. Laflı and A. Muller, 187-200. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.
  • "Material Evidence for Ancient Greek Religion" (2015). In Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion, eds. E. Eidinow and J. Kindt, 113-130. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [18 pp.]
  • "Hellenistic and Roman Egypt" (2015). In D.L. Clayman (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Classics. New York: Oxford University Press. [87 pp.]
  • "The Perceived Value of Minoan and Minoanizing Pottery in Egypt" (2009). Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 22.2: 211-234. [24 pp.]
  • "Was Dust Their Food and Clay Their Bread? Grave Goods, the Mesopotamian Afterlife, and the Liminal Role of Inana/Ishtar" (2007). Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 7: 7-65. [59 pp.]

OTHER ARTICLES, BRIEF ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES, AND ENTRIES IN MUSEUM CATALOGS

  • “Casa della Regina Carolina, Regio VIII.3.14” (2020). K.L. Gleason, C.E. Barrett, and A. Marzano. Fasti Online (http://www.fastionline.org/excavation/micro_view.php?fst_cd=AIAC_4667&curcol=sea_cd-AIAC_10402). 
  • Multiple entries (2018) in Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World, eds. J. Spier et al., 250, 252–253, 272, 276-277, no. 174. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. 
  • "Figurines" (with E. Darby) (2016). In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions, ed. E. Orlin, 344-346. New York: Routledge. [3 pp.]
  • "Harpokrates" (2016). In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions, ed. E. Orlin, 388. New York: Routledge. [1 p.]
  • "Gems" (with V. Platt) (2015). In Cornell Collection of Antiquities, ed. A. Alexandridis and V. Platt (http://antiquities.stg.library.cornell.edu/gems). [3 pp.]
  • "Plaster Perspectives on 'Magical Gems': Rethinking the Meaning of 'Magic' in Cornell's Dactyliotheca" (2015). In Cornell Collection of Antiquities, ed. A. Alexandridis and V. Platt (http://antiquities.stg.library.cornell.edu/gems/plaster-perspectives-on-magical-gems). 
  • "Terracotta Figurines of Harpocrates from Greco-Roman Egypt" (2013). In C.M. Manassa (ed.), Echoes of Egypt: Conjuring the Land of the Pharaohs (http://echoesofegypt.peabody.yale.edu/overview/harpocrates-figurines). Online exhibit catalog for a 2013-2014 exhibition at the Yale Peabody Museum. [4 pp.]
  • "'Campana' Relief with Roman Nilotic Landscape" (2013). In C.M. Manassa (ed.), Echoes of Egypt: Conjuring the Land of the Pharaohs (http://echoesofegypt.peabody.yale.edu/overview/campana-relief-roman-nilotic-landscape). Online exhibit catalog for a 2013-2014 exhibition at the Yale Peabody Museum. [3 pp.]
  • "Egyptianizing Graeco-Roman Objects" (with C.M. Manassa) (2013). In C.M. Manassa (ed.), Echoes of Egypt: Conjuring the Land of the Pharaohs, pp. 15-16 [print edition]. New Haven: Yale Peabody Museum. Exhibit catalog for a 2013-2014 exhibition at the Yale Peabody Museum. [2 pp.]

INVITED BOOK REVIEWS

  • Review (2013) of M. Trümper, Die 'Agora des Italiens' in Delos: Baugeschichte, Architektur, Ausstattung und Funktion einer späthellenistischen Porticus-Anlage. Journal of Hellenic Studies 133: 116-117. [2 pp.]
  • Review (2012) of B. Rabe, Zwischen Entwurf und Produkt: Die griechisch-römischen Gipsformen aus Ägypten im Museum August Kestner, Hannover. Coroplastic Studies Interest Group Book Reviews (http://www.coroplasticstudies.org/reviews-rabe.html).

NOTES, RESEARCH REPORTS, AND BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS

  • "Nilotic Scenes, Egyptian Religion, and Roman Perceptions" (2013). Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 5: 3-5. [3 pp.]
  • "Recent Research in Greco-Egyptian Interactions" (2012). Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 4:4. [1 p.]
  • "Egyptian Imagery in Hellenistic Bulgaria: Lamps from the Thracian City of Seuthopolis" (2010). CSIG News: Newsletter of the Coroplastic Studies Interest Group 4: 17. [1 p.]
  • "Religious Syncretism in Egyptianizing Terracotta Figurines from Delos" (2009). CSIG News: Annual Newsletter of the Coroplastic Studies Interest Group 1: 10. [1 p.]

 

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