Martina Urban
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Jewish Studies

M.A. Freie Universität Berlin
Ph.D. Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Email: Martina.Urban@Vanderbilt.edu

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"In Search of a 'Narrative Anthology': Reflections on an Unpublished Buber Manuscript."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.