Department
of Religious Studies
Martina
Urban
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Jewish StudiesM.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.'
Book:
Aesthetics of Renewal. Martin Buber's Representation of
Hasidism as Kulturkritik. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 2008.
Articles:
"Towards What Kind of Unity? David Koigen, Leo Baeck and the
Monism- Theism-Debate," Leo Baeck Institute Year Book,
forthcoming, 2009.
"Deconstruction Anticipated: Koigen and Buber on a
Self-Reflective Religion." Shofar 27, No. 4 (summer
2009).
"Religion of Reason Revised: David Koigen's Interpretation of
the Jewish Ethos." Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 16/1
(July 2008): 59-89.
"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, 2008 Ch. 9,
165-191..
"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Unpublished Buber Manuscript."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