S T A F F
David J. Wasserstein, Program Director, Email: david.wasserstein@vanderbilt.edu
Program Administrator, Email: jewishstudies@vanderbilt.edu

STEERING COMMITTEE

FACULTY

STEERING COMMITTEE

David J. Wasserstein, Director, Professor of History and of Jewish Studies
B.A. (Oxford, 1974); Ph.D. (Oxford, 1982) [2004]
david.wasserstein@vanderbilt.edu

Professor Wasserstein came to Vanderbilt from Tel Aviv’s Department of Middle Eastern and African History, where he taught from 1990 to 2004. He is a historian of Islam, of Judaism in Islam, and of the medieval world. His publications are many, including two substantial books issued respectively by Princeton and the Clarendon Press and numerous articles on topics including Jewish history, Islamic history, medieval numismatics, etc. The Legend of the Septuagint from Antiquity to Today, written by David Wasserstein together with his late father Abraham Wasserstein, is about to appear from Cambridge University Press.

Dan Cornfield, Professor of Sociology; Acting Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies
A.B., A.M., Ph.D. (Chicago 1974, 1977, 1980) [1980]
daniel.b.cornfield@vanderbilt.edu

Daniel B. Cornfield is Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, Acting Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, Editor of the scholarly journal Work and Occupations, and Principal Investigator of the 2002-03 Immigrant Community Assessment of Nashville, Tennessee. His research addresses work, labor, employment, immigration, and ethnic-race relations in the United States. He is presently conducting a field study of the careers and pathways taken toward the American Dream by Nashville music professionals. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, UN International Labor Office, and the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt. Since 1993, he has delivered over 25 lectures in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, England and Wales, Germany, Israel, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, and South Africa. Among his recent publications are “Immigration, Economic Restructuring, and Labor Ruptures: From the Amalgamated to Change to Win” in WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society (June 2006), and his co-edited volume with Lowell Turner, Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds: Local Solidarity in a Global Economy (Cornell University Press, 2007).

Sara Eigen, Assistant Professor of German
B.A. (Yale 1987); A.M., Ph.D. (Harvard 1995, 2001) [2001]
sara.eigen@Vanderbilt.Edu

Sara Eigen's foci include German Literature 1600-1900, history of German law, history and philosophy of science, race theory, film history and theory, cultural representation under fascism. Two recent publications include "Hannah Arendt's Lessing-Rede and the 'Truths' of History" (2001) and "A Mother's Love, A Father's Law: Law Medicine, and Eighteenth Century Fictions of Patrilineal Genealogy" (2000). She also co-organized a conference at Harvard University (May, 20001) entitled "The German Invention of Race."

Ellen Goldring, Professor, Education Policy and Leadership, Peabody College
B.S. (Wisconsin 1978); M.A. (Tel Aviv 1982); Ph.D. (Chicago 1985) [1991]
ellen.goldring@vanderbilt.edu

Ellen Goldring's research interests reside in two main areas. One strand centers on understanding and shaping school reform efforts that connect families, communities, and schools. She is co-author of Magnet Schools in Urban Districts: What's Our Choice (Teacher College Press), with Claire Smrekar, that focuses on questions of equity and community in urban school districts with extensive magnet school plans, and Principals of Dynamic Schools (Corwin Press) with Sharon Rallis. Much of her other scholarly work focuses on the changing role of school leaders as the organizational contexts for schools become more complex and varied. Her research examines how principals play a pivotal and changing role as schools become re-embedded in their larger community structures. She studies the organizational features of schools and leadership that affect parent participation. She is currently inovlved in a number of projects that are studying expertise in school leadership, new models for professional development for school leaders, and linking leading and learning.

Shaul Kelner, Assistant Professor of Sociology and of Jewish Studies
B.A. (The George Washington University 1992); M.Phil, Soc., Ph.D. Soc. (City University of New York 2000, 2002) [2005]
s.kelner@vanderbilt.edu

Shaul Kelner received his Ph.D. in Sociology in October 2002 from the City University of New York, which he attended as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. Most recently he served as Senior Research Associate at Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, an applied research institute that studies contemporary Jewish life. Affiliated with the Cohen Center since 1998, he has led or otherwise contributed to numerous research projects about American Jews. His work blends qualitative and quantitative methods to shed light on issues such as Israel-Diaspora relations, Jewish education, adolescent Jewish identity, the professional workforce of Jewish organizations, and gender equity in the Jewish community. A former fellow of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s prestigious Institute for Advanced Studies, Dr. Kelner is currently writing a book about contemporary Jewish pilgrimage and tourism to Israel. Based on his doctoral dissertation, the research draws extensively from his research into Birthright Israel, a five-year-old program that has sent 70,000 Diaspora Jewish college-age adults on free trips to Israel. He is also engaged in an ongoing study of the historical-sociology of the Soviet Jewry movement.

Richard King, Associate Professor of Religious Studies
B.A. (Hull University, UK, 1987); Ph.D. (Lancaster University, 1993)
richard.king@vanderbilt.edu

Richard King was formerly Professor of Asian Philosophy and Comparative Religion and Chair of the Religion department at Derby University (UK) and before that was Reader and Chair of Religious Studies at Stirling University in Scotland. He has served as visiting professor and guest lecturer at Liverpool Hope and Cambridge Universities and has delivered public lectures at universities in Europe and the United States. Professor King's main research interests include: Indian philosophical schools (especially Advaita Vedanta), Mahayana Buddhist thought in India, the impact of coloniality on Indian wisdom traditions, poststructuralist and postcolonial approaches to the study of religion, and the comparative study of mysticism and spirituality. He has published a number of articles on various aspects of Hindu and Buddhist thought and theory and method in the study of religion and is the author of four books.

Leah S. Marcus, Edwin Mims Professor of English; Acting Chair of the Department
B.A. (Carleton 1967); M.A., Ph.D. (Columbia 1968, 1971) [1998]

Leah Marcus is the Edwin Mims Professor of English at Vanderbilt. She received her B.A. from Carleton College and her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1971. Before coming to Vanderbilt in 1998, she taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago; the Univerisity of Wisconsin, Madison; and the University of Texas, Austin. She teaches classes on sixteenth and seventeenth century literature, Shakespeare, and Renaissance drama.

Her books include The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes (1986), Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents (1988), and Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton (1996). She is also the co-editor of two volumes of the writings of Elizabeth I: Elizabeth I: Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals (2003) and Elizabeth I: Collected Works (2000), which won the Prize from the Association of American Publishers. Her articles have appeared in journals such as English Literary History, English Literary Renaissance, and Shakespeare Quarterly. Her article "Textual Indeterminacy and Ideological Difference: The Case of Doctor Faustus" (Renaissance Drama, 1989) was awarded the Marlowe Society Prize for best essay on Marlowe in 1991.

Edward L. Rubin, Dean of the Law School; John Wade–Kent Syverud Professor of Law
A.B. (Princeton 1969); J.D. (Yale 1979) [2005]

Ed Rubin joined Vanderbilt Law School as dean and the first John Wade–Kent Syverud Professor of Law in July 2005. A distinguished and erudite scholar who has addressed a broad range of topics, Dean Rubin is the author of numerous books, articles and chapters, including two volumes published in 2005, Beyond Camelot: Rethinking Politics and Law for the Modern State (Princeton University Press) and Federalism: A Theoretical Inquiry, co-authored with long-time collaborator Malcolm Feeley.

Jack M. Sasson, Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible; Professor of Classics
B.A. (Brooklyn 1962); Ph.D. (Brandeis 1966) [1999]

Professor Sasson retired from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) as its William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Religious Studies. He is currently president of the International Association for Assyriology and a past president of the American Oriental Society (1996) and of the Society of Biblical Literature (SE branch, 1986). He has belonged to the editorial board of a number of journals and series, among them the Biblical Archaeologist, Mesopotamian Studies, Mari: Annales derecherches interdisciplinaires, Shofar, Estudios de Asia y Africa, as well as major reference tools such as The Anchor Bible Dictionary. He has edited the "Bible and Ancient Near East" pages of the Journal of the American Oriental Society (1976-1984, 1996-1999) and was the chief editor of Scribner's awards-winning Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, a 4-volume reference set that appeared in 1995. He has lectured widely, including recently as a Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne, of Hong Kong's Chinese , Venice International, Ben-Gurion, and Brigham Young universities. Sasson's scholarly efforts have clustered around two disciplines: Assyriology, specializing on the archives found at the Middle-Euphrates town of Mari, and Hebrew Scripture, having published commentaries on Ruth (1979, (now also in a second edition) and the Anchor Bible's Jonah (1989).

Allison Schachter, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies
B.A. (Stanford University 1996); Ph.D. (University of California, Berkeley 2006) [2006]
allison.schachter@vanderbilt.edu

Allison Schachter, Assistant Professor in Literatures of the Jewish People, earned her Ph.D. (completed 2006) at the University of California, Berkeley in comparative literature specializing in Hebrew and Yiddish. At Berkeley she worked with Robert Alter and Chana Kronfeld, writing her dissertation on 'Illusions of Home: the Shifting Landscape of Eastern Europe in Hebrew and Yiddish Literature', examining how modernist writers in these two languages between the 1890s and the 1940s navigated the changing geography of Eastern European Jewish culture from its near-mythic origins in the shtetl to the centers of international modernism in Europe and in pre-state Palestine. Allison is fluent in Hebrew and Yiddish, as well as in French, and will be teaching courses at Vanderbilt next year on Gender, Sexuality, and Desire in Jewish Literature; Introduction to Hebrew Literature; and Jewish Literary Centers. In this last she will be looking specially at Jewish literary centres in Poland, Berlin, Vienna, New York, and Tel Aviv.

Martina Urban, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and of Jewish Studies
M.A. (Freir Universität Berlin 1993); Ph.D. (Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2003) [2003]
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 modern Jewish thought. She employs various hermeneutical theories to examine patterns of appropriation and representation of traditional literature and religious concepts in contemporary contexts. Professor Urban is editing a volume on Hasidism of a critical edition of Martin Buber's writings (Gütersloh, 2001-). Among her projects are also a book on "The Hermeneutics of Renewal" - an analysis of Buber's appropriation of mystical teachings for spiritual renewal - as well as a study of the conception and cultural program of an anthological representation of Hebrew sources in German sponsored in the 1930s by the Schocken Publishing House of Berlin, addressed to a secularized Jewish reader.

 

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