Jonathan Boyarin, the Hendrix Director of Jewish Studies, the Diann G. and Thomas A. Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and professor of anthropology, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research (AAJR). The AAJR was founded in 1919 and includes about one hundred of the most eminent scholars of Jewish Studies in North America.
In a letter to Boyarin, AAJR president Gershon Hundert wrote, “your election reflects the high regard in which your peers in Jewish studies regard your research and writing.” At the AAJR's upcoming retreat in Montreal, Boyarin will participate in a panel discussion on "New Directions in Jewish Studies."
Boyarin’s work centers on Jewish communities and on the dynamics of Jewish culture, memory and identity. He has investigated these fields in a range of ethnographic projects set in Paris, Jerusalem, and the Lower East Side of New York City. Much of his work is in interdisciplinary critical theory, almost always from the perspective of modern Jewish politics and experience, and includes comparative work on diaspora, the politics of time and space, and the ethnography of reading.
An expert on Yiddish, Boyarin’s most recent book is a translation from that language, "A Fire Burns in Kotsk." His other books include "Jewish Families," "Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul: A Lower East Side Summer" and "The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe."
