About Me
I am a historian and author who seeks to write the critical history of the present. That is, I attempt to give in-depth, evidence-based historical analysis on questions of evident contemporary relevance, forcing us to step away from what we think we know to consider other deeper causal factors and multiple possible outcomes. My work focuses on modern Europe and the Mediterranean, with specialties in the history of modern France and its empire, modern Jewish history, and Muslim-Jewish relations.
Publications and Collaborations
My first book is a history of Jewish-Muslim relations in France since World War I, entitled The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France. The book was published in autumn 2015 by Harvard University Press and recently won a 2015 National Jewish Book Award. In summer 2015, I also published a collection of essays, Secularism in Question: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times (University of Pennsylvania Press) that reconsiders how Jewish studies and the larger "secularism debate" can be brought into fruitful conversation.
Currently, I am embarked on a set of new projects. Along with my co-editors Lisa Leff and Maud Mandel, I am currently completing a new collected volume, Colonialism and the Jews, which we hope will offer the most robust treatment to date of the relationship between Jewish history and colonial history and will appear in 2016 with Indiana University Press. I am also in the early stages of a new project provisionally entitled Freeing the Empire: The Jewish Uprising That Helped the Allies Win the War. This book seeks to chronicle the riveting and fascinating yet little-known story of an uprising in Algiers from 1940 to 1943 that proved vital to the success of Operation Torch. In the process, the work will examine larger issues such as the meaning of the choice to resist and the complexity of the relationship between colonialism and the Holocaust.
Teaching
At the University of Cincinnati, I teach courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level on modern Europe, the Mediterranean, Jewish history, Jews and Muslims, religion in the modern world, modern France and its empire, and historical methodologies. I have been invited to present at universities throughout the United States including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, UCLA, Michigan, Brown, Columbia, Amherst, Williams, and Boston College, as well as in France and Israel.
Scholarships and Awards
I am grateful for numerous fellowships and awards. These include, most notably: The National Jewish Book Award; a Chateaubriand Fellowship of the French Embassy to the United States; a George L. Mosse distinguished graduate fellowship from the University of Wisconsin; dissertation grants from the Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Society for French Historical Studies; faculty research fellowships from the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan (declined), and the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.
Publications and Collaborations
My first book is a history of Jewish-Muslim relations in France since World War I, entitled The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France. The book was published in autumn 2015 by Harvard University Press and recently won a 2015 National Jewish Book Award. In summer 2015, I also published a collection of essays, Secularism in Question: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times (University of Pennsylvania Press) that reconsiders how Jewish studies and the larger "secularism debate" can be brought into fruitful conversation.
Currently, I am embarked on a set of new projects. Along with my co-editors Lisa Leff and Maud Mandel, I am currently completing a new collected volume, Colonialism and the Jews, which we hope will offer the most robust treatment to date of the relationship between Jewish history and colonial history and will appear in 2016 with Indiana University Press. I am also in the early stages of a new project provisionally entitled Freeing the Empire: The Jewish Uprising That Helped the Allies Win the War. This book seeks to chronicle the riveting and fascinating yet little-known story of an uprising in Algiers from 1940 to 1943 that proved vital to the success of Operation Torch. In the process, the work will examine larger issues such as the meaning of the choice to resist and the complexity of the relationship between colonialism and the Holocaust.
Teaching
At the University of Cincinnati, I teach courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level on modern Europe, the Mediterranean, Jewish history, Jews and Muslims, religion in the modern world, modern France and its empire, and historical methodologies. I have been invited to present at universities throughout the United States including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, UCLA, Michigan, Brown, Columbia, Amherst, Williams, and Boston College, as well as in France and Israel.
Scholarships and Awards
I am grateful for numerous fellowships and awards. These include, most notably: The National Jewish Book Award; a Chateaubriand Fellowship of the French Embassy to the United States; a George L. Mosse distinguished graduate fellowship from the University of Wisconsin; dissertation grants from the Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Society for French Historical Studies; faculty research fellowships from the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan (declined), and the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.
