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Profile

I am a scholar of literature, religion and intellectual history with a special interest in Jewish-autobiographical narratives of conversion and apostasy. After completing my Ph.D. in comparative literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, I held postdoctoral positions at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, Goethe University, Frankfurt and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (The Martin Buber Society of Fellows). I joined the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton as an assistant professor in August 2022. 

Courses taught

• REL 103
• REL 250

Selected publications

Peer-reviewed journal articles

“Zionism, Pan-Asianism and the Post-Colonial Predicament in the Interwar Writings of Eugen Hoeflich” AJS Review Vol. 45.1, 2021 (pp. 120-142)

“Hugo Hamid Marcus (1880-1966): The Muslim Convert as German Jew.” 

The Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 109.4, 2019 (pp. 598-630)

“Muslim Identity on the Suburban Frontier: The American Jewish Context of Maryam Jameelah’s Conversion.” Journal of Jewish Identities Vol. 12.2, 2019 (pp. 125-148)

“Jewish Self-Affirmation out of the Sources of Christian Supersessionism: Margarete Susman’s The Book of Job and the Fate of the Jewish People.” Jewish Studies Quarterly Vol. 24, 2017 (pp. 168-193)

“Reading Kafka, Debating Revelation: Gershom Scholem’s Shadow Dialogue with Hans-Joachim Schoeps.” Literature and Theology Vol. 31.1, 2017 (pp. 78-98)

“Muhammad Asad’s Conversion to Islam as a Case Study in Jewish Self-Orientalization.” 

Jewish Social Studies Vol. 22.1, 2016 (pp. 1-28)

“Nihilism, Modernity and the Jewish Spirit: Margarete Susman’s Transvaluation of a Fin de Siècle Trope.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies Vol. 34.2, 2016 (pp. 1-25)

“Max Brod and Hans-Joachim Schoeps: Literary Collaborators, Ideological Rivals.” 

The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook Vol. 60, 2015 (pp. 5-24)

“The ‘German-Jewish Dialogue’ and its Literary Refractions: The Case of Margarete Susman and Gershom Scholem.” Modern Judaism Vol. 35.1, 2015 (pp. 1-17)

Peer-reviewed book chapters 

“Postcolonial Parallels in Albert Memmi’s Portrait of Frantz Fanon: Negotiating Négritude, Nativism and Jewish Nationalism.” Forthcoming in Unacknowledged Kinships: Zionism and Postcolonialism. Eds. Stefan Vogt, Derek Penslar, and Arieh Saposnik. Brandeis University Press.

“The German-Jewish Legacy beyond Jewish Peoplehood: Margarete Susman on Landauer’s Anarchism and its Afterlife.” The Skepsis and Antipolitics of Gustav Landauer. Eds. Libera Pisano and Cedric Cohen Skalli. Brill Publishers (2023), 253-272.

“The Shifting Landscape of Jewishness in Contemporary Kafka Criticism.” Democracy, Dialogue, Memory: Expression and Affect Beyond Consensus. Eds. Idit Alphandary and Leszek Koczanowicz. Taylor & Francis (2018), 153-167.