Department
of Religious Studies
Martina
Urban
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Jewish Studies
M.A. Freie Universität Berlin
Ph.D. Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Professor Urban's area of expertise is Jewish
Intellectual History. Her research focuses on the dialectic of
secularization and revalorization of religion in secular
modernity. She examines patterns of appropriation and
representation of traditional literature and religious concepts in
contemporary contexts and theories of culture and renewal. Her
book "Aesthetics of Renewal" offers an analysis of Martin Buber's
appropriation of mystical teachings. She is currently working on
her second book tentatively entitled: Theodicy of Culture: David
Koigen's 'Moral God.'
Books:
Aesthetics of Renewal. Martin Buber's
Representation of Hasidism as Kulturkritik. The University
of Chicago Press, forthcoming, August 2008.
Articles:
"Religion of Reason Revised: David Koigen's
Interpretation of the Jewish Ethos." Journal of Jewish Thought
and Philosophy, forthcoming Spring 2008.
"Persecution and the Art of Representation: Schocken's
Maimonides-Anthologies of the 1930s." Maimonides and his
Heritage. Ed. by Lenn E. Goodman and Idit Dobbs-Weinstein,
forthcoming, Spring 2008.
"Mysticism and Sprachkritik: Buber's Rendering of the
Mystical Metaphor 'ahizat 'enayim." Revista Portuguesa de
Filosofia 62/2-4. Entre Razão e Revelação:
A Lógica da Dimensão Semítica na Filosofia
(Abril-Decembro, 2006): 535-552.
"The Jewish Library Reconfigured: Buber and the Zionist
Anthology Discourse." New Perspectives on Martin Buber/Neue
Perspektiven zu Martin Buber. Ed. Michael Zank. Tuebingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2006: 31-60 [Religion in Philosophy and Theory
22].
"Hermeneutics of Renewal: Biblical Imagery and Tropes of
Ecstatic Experience in Buber's Early Interpretation of
Hasidism." Studies in Spirituality 15 (2005): 1-33.
"Retelling Biblical Mythos through the Hasidic Tale:
Buber's 'Saul and David' and the Question of Leadership."
Modern Judaism, 24/1 (February 2004): 59-78.
"In Search of a 'Narrative Anthology': Reflections on an
Unpublished Buber Manuscript." Jewish Studies Quarterly, 7/3
(2000): 252-288.
"Ständige Gegenwart. Yeshayahu Leibowitz' ahistorische
Sicht des Judentums." La storia della filosofia ebraica, 1/3
(1993): 497-507.
You can email
Martina Urban at Martina.Urban@Vanderbilt.edu
Last Updated: February 2007