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I received my Ph.d. from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, (where I was in the Theological Studies department of the Graduate Division of Religion - from '95 - 2002) in May, 2002.
I began my appointment as assistant professor of Christian Theology at Drew University, in Madison, New Jersey, in January, 2002, where I am teaching in the Theological school and in the graduate school and I enjoyed a recent visit to OCHJS in May!
This February I graduated a Master program at the University of Bucharest.
It may be interesting to mention that this is the first program of this kind
in Bucharest and the Centre for Hebrew Studies that is organizing it is hoping
to also start an undergraduate program at some time in the future.
My dissertation was on the literature written and published in Romanian language
in Israel (mostly 
memorialistic,
but not only).
After graduating from Oxford I finished my degree in Moscow University (1998),
and went on to study for a PhD. My dissertation was devoted to Jewish Art of
Byzantine Palestine in the wide cultural context. The dissertation was defended
in 2001. I was then offered a place in the Institute of Art Studies of the Russian
Academy of Science (Institut Isskusstvoznania RAN). At the moment I am preparing
my research for publication.
Best wishes!
In 1997, I completed my Master of Arts degree at Carleton University, Ottawa,
with a dissertation on the social and architectural history of the Succah. In
the fall of that year, I moved to Berkeley, California, to begin my Ph.D in
Architectural History at the University of California, Berkeley. I am currently
beginning to write, after three years of teaching and coursework, comprehensive
examinations, and one year of research. My major field is Architectural and
Urban History in North America and Western Europe, 1750-present, and I have
minor fields in Talmud and the Anthropology of Religion. My dissertation will
offer an analysis of the ways in which religious groups define, design, construct
and use urban public space. Most importantly, in June of 1999, I married Daniel
Horowitz in Berkeley, California. We now live in Charlottesville, Virginia,
where Daniel is completing a degree in law at the University of Virginia.
Right now (February 2003)I am busy preparing to move to the USA for permanent
residency, so my life is probably going to change a lot. Since my year in Oxford,
I finished a master's in Cultural Studies in Kiev, and the last year I spent
in The Netherlands studying at Leiden University for a Master's in Non-Western
Studies. I was working there on Hekhalot literature, and studying Biblical Hebrew
and Aramaic. I got married in 2001, and in a couple
of months hope to join my husband who is now living in the States. Hopefully,
after I recover from the culture shock, I can somehow combine studies and work!
I am responding to your call for an update. I'm living in Brooklyn, NY and
working in Manhattan at the Covenant Foundation. The Covenant Foundation provides
funding to innovative programs in North America in the field of Jewish education
across all demoninations and in all educational settings. We also provide awards
to exceptional Jewish educators in the US and Canada. During the school-year
I taught a group of rambunctious first graders in a Jewish after-school program
at the 92nd Street Y. Recently, an essay I wrote was published in Maydeleh:
a zine for nice Jewish girls. It may also appear in an anthology of writings
by "Jewish daughters of intermarriage." In the summer I attended the CAJE (Conference
on Alternatives in Jewish Education) conference in Colorado and travelled the
west coast of the US during part of July and August.
Things are going well!
Since completing the year at OCHJS I studied for a doctorate in Birmingham
on the collective memory of the Holocaust in German Protestant theology, which
was published last year. In June 2000 I began work at the Centre for Jewish-Christian
Relations in Cambridge. I am teaching a module on Christian and Jewish Religious
Responses to the Holocaust on the MA programme. My current research concerns
the representation
of the history of the Holocaust in Jewish and Christian texts.
I am working for the Bulgarian government, generally consulting parliamentary represented political parties how to do outreach. We have local elections on October 26th, and I am running a national Voter Education and Gat-Out-The-Vote Campaign: voter registration, combating vote buys, access for the disabled, monitoring, election day activities ? that sort of stuff. It keeps me pretty busy; and popular because I also administer funds. I also have some international assignments in the former Soviet republics and the Balkan countries, predominantly Georgia and Kosovo, where I am the leading consultant for their local NGO election activities. My husband also travels extensively but mainly to more civilized parts of Europe. Since last year he has been teaching computer system administration at the University of Sofia.
I am not sure if I wrote after our second daughter was born. We have 2 girls now: you might remember Yana, she turned 5 in August, and we have a baby girl Boyana, who just turned one. As you see, we are not very imaginative in terms of names ! Yana wants to be a ballet dancer, so she goes to ballet classes. The baby is just a cute little curly baby who just learned to say mama. We are still in touch with some friends from Yarnton. This summer both Robyn from Australia and Elizabeth from Germany visited us in Bulgaria ? it was so nice to see them, we had a wonderful time together.
Having successfully completed the MSt in Jewish Studies I went back to Berlin,Germany where I was granted a scholarship for my doctorate in Theology by the Humboldt University. Under the supervision of the New Testament scholar Cilliers Breytenbach, my dissertation is devoted to images of space in the III Sibylline Oracle. My thesis is incorporated into a project called TOPOI (www.topoi.org) which is part of the so-called 'excellence initiative' which aims to promote top level research and improve the quality of German universities and is funded by the German Research Foundation (www.dfg.de).
After graduating from OCHJS, I have spent several years in doing full-time and part-time research in Poland, the Crimea, Israel, Russia, and Germany. In 2004 I returned to Oxford where I have been enrolled for a D.Phil in the faculty of Modern History. In November 2007 I received my D.Phil degree. My area of research remains more or less the same, with my major interest in the history of Crimean Jewry (Khazars, Krimchakim, and Karaites) and different aspects of the history of the Karaite Jews (Karaites) in Eastern Europe. From 1998 to 2007, I have published a monograph and ca. 50 articles in English, Russian, German and Hebrew.
Since my time at the Centre I have nearly finished my PhD dissertation; I will
probably be defending it this winter. I have also obtained a teaching position
at Nowodworski High School in Krakow, as a teacher of classical Greek, and a
position of Greek teacher at the Jagellonian University in Krakow. Currently
I am also teaching
English.
I completed the Diploma in 1997 and returned to the US, but last year succeeded
in emigrating to Canada. I am now a writer and proofreader in Toronto and would
love to hear from other Oxford folks, especially those
who were there in 1996-97. Cheers to all!
I am currently finishing a Masters in International Relations at Sydney
University, one semester left, but actually deferred this current semester,
to travel and further my French language studies. Right now I am in Villefranche-Sur-Mer,
near Nice, in an intensive language school. The classes are hard but the view
and the sun are worth it!
I have just spent four weeks in Africa with my family, which was incredible,
and the main reason for the timing of this trip, but in the 4 months I've been
away I have also managed to visit 3 past students of Yarnton. Kim Ashton and
Maya Minkin(just recently engaged), who are both near Boston, and Linda Stucbartova,(married
in July) who is back in Prague. After my four weeks here I will spend another
four weeks
away, mostly in Paris and Amsterdam. Am having a wonderful time, obviously.
1998/99 lecturer in Philosophy and History of Religion, University of Warsaw
1999/2000 Lady Davis Visiting Research Fellow, Dept. of Jewish Thought, Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and Research Fellow at Franz Rosenzweig Research Centre
for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History, also at Hebrew University
2000 - present Rawnsley Scholar, St. Hugh's College, Oxford
Works
on intellectual history of the Frankist Movement in Poland, Bohemia, Moravia
in Germany
Christine has published a book on contemporary
American-Jewish literature, entitled Jerome Rothenberg's Experimental Poetry and
Jewish Tradition (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2005). The
publisher's describes the book as follows: "Exploring the interplay of American poetry and
American Judaism, the book demonstrates ways in which Rothenberg
contributes to the creation of an American Jewish avant-garde poetry and
a contemporary Jewish Diaspora identity."
I completed the MSt in the spring of 2005, and have since moved to Atlanta, Georgia to begin my PhD in Hebrew Bible at Emory University. It's now been almost a year since I left OCHJS, although it's hard to believe that time has gone by so quickly! It seems like just yesterday that I was busy studying for exams and finishing up my thesis paper. I am thankful that I had the chance to study at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. While there I had the opportunity to continue my study of Biblical Hebrew, take many other interesting classes which have continued to aid my current work, as well as to further explore areas in which I was already proficient. And I got to do all of that while surrounded by a beautiful English landscape, with a historic and fascinating city just done the road!
Since leaving the Centre I have participated in several research projects, enjoyed several research fellowships, and had the chance to teach for two years at Samarkand Universities, in Uzbekistan, in the framework of a non-governmental Civic Education Project, which aimed to introduce western social sciences in post-soviet countries. I submitted my doctoral dissertation in April 2009, Department of Social Anthropology, Universitat Autˆwnoma de Barcelona, in front of an international tribunal and was awarded the highest grade, with honours. I have been nominated for the special price for the best doctoral dissertation of 2008-09, which will be decided around the middle of next year. My dissertation was on Sephardim in Modern Spain: between nationalism, antisemitism and philosephardism. At present I am teaching at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and in March 2010 I will join a research team at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona as a post-doctoral researcher. I will be doing research on Spanish consular proteges in Muslim lands (19th and 20th centuries).
Matthew Olshan has written to tell us about the publication of his new novel, a fantasy for clever 8 to 12-year-olds entitled The Flown Sky (Chacmool Press, 2007). Fellow OCHJS alumni (and alumnae) might be able to detect themes from Jewish mysticism in the novel, although they are pretty thoroughly disguised. Matthew says he learned this trick from his literary hero, Franz Kafka, whose fantastic beasts were the subject of Matthew’s dissertation at the Centre.
He sends greetings from Baltimore, Maryland where he lives with his wife Shana and daughter Nina. Matthew can be contacted on MdOlshan@aol.com.
I'm currently at the University of Notre Dame as an Erasmus Institute dissertation
fellow and a visiting graduate student for the 2003-4 academic year. Notre Dame's
Erasmus Institute supports scholars whose research draws from the Abrahamictradition
(Christian, Jewish and Muslim). I hope to defend my dissertation in June 2004.
In the meanwhile,
I'm enjoying the MidWest (quite a change from San Diego) and the Notre Dame
life.
My wife Nadia and I moved home to Jamaica after Oxford. She taught at the
University of the West Indies for a year and I worked with some friends as a
design consultant and project manager. We now live in Princeton where Nadia
is doing her PhD in English. I take the train up to New York University a couple
of times a week where I'm doing my PhD in Hebrew Bible. I've just about made
it to the end of my first year. I've got two more years of coursework left and
then two or three years worth of dissertating so I'll be in school for quite
a while yet! I'm enjoying the program though, especially because of my interaction
with
the professors who teach the course.
We (Kim and I) are the proud parents of four children (Bethany-11, Joseph-9, Joshua-6, and Kazim-3) and are now living in Memphis, Tennessee. I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis. Last summer (2007), I completed my PhD from UCLA in modern Middle East history with a focus on the late Ottoman Empire. My dissertation is titled "Penal Reform, Nation-state Construction, and Modernity in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1908-1919." Yes, I work on "Turkish Prisons." Kim, the children, I spent almost two years in Istanbul (2003-05) on two different Fulbright Grants conducting my dissertation research. Life is good and we miss all of our friends we had there in Yarnton. Kim and I will be traveling to Oxford this July (2008) for a conference and plan to visit the Centre.
I received my Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History from the University of California,
Santa Barbara in 2000 and I am currently Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern
History at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL,
USA.
I will be graduating in October, receiving DEA /French equivalent to Master´s
degree from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. During
the summer, I went to a Summer School on Common Foreign
and Security Policy in Berlin, which still remains my main area of interest.
Many regards from Prague!
My doctoral thesis was published by Brill in 2004 under the title: "Wrestling with Angels: A Study of the Relationship between Angels and Humans in Late Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity," Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums #55.
In the Fall of 2004, I began as an Assistant Professor of New Testament at Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI). My website is: http://www.marquette.edu/theology/faculty/KevinSullivan.shtml
Many thanks to the OCHJS and best wishes to my former classmates.
(April 2005)
After returning to Poland I found a job as a tour guide and researcher at the
Majdanek State Museum in Lublin (situated on site of the former Nazi concentration
and death camp) and one year later I left for Cambridge where I was awarded,
as the first Polish student, a full academic scholarship at the Centre for Jewish-Christian
Relations. In June 2001 I received an MA in Jewish-Christian Relations and am
the only Pole so far to have this degree. At the moment I am looking for fundings
for my Ph.D. programme at UCL which is supposed to start next September.
All
the best!
Much has changed since I last posted an update on the Alumni News. I am now working hard to complete my relatively groundbreaking Ph.D. thesis on book burning and Early Modern English literature at University of Warsaw, Poland, and am more or less established as a professional translator with several completed book projects to my name, including Theo Richmond’s excellent Konin. A Quest and Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father. Asia and I are happily married and living in Warsaw (my study is still as minimalist as it ever was). We have a sweet three-year-old son, Julian, and another baby is due in March 2008. Best wishes to all the good people I met in Yarnton in 1999 and 2000, and still remember fondly after all those years
Barry Trachtenberg is assistant professor of European Jewish Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. He has published articles in the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies and Science in Context, as well as in several edited volumes.
He is the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his work on Yiddish in the twentieth century. His book, The Revolutionary Roots of Modern Yiddish, 1903-1917 <http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/fall-2008/revolutionary-roots-modern-yiddish.html> , will be published by Syracuse University Press in Fall 2008.
Currently I am an Associate Professor and a Head of Estonian as a Second Language
Department at Tartu University Narva College, Estonia. My field includes language
contacts in the Baltic region, including Yiddish. I have published articles
on Yiddish language in Estonia, Yiddish dialects in the Baltic region, problems
of language choice among Yiddish-speakers, as well as some papers concerning
translation of Yiddish fiction into Estonian and into Russian. I have translated
into Estonian works by Sh.An-ski, Sholem-Aleichem, I.B.Singer
and D. Bergelson.
Dawn, now married to John Sellars, has just been awarded a PhD from the University of Sheffield (2004). She studied for this on a part-time basis in Sheffield's Department of Biblical Studies. Her dissertation topic was the leadership of King Saul.
I am entering the third year of my PhD programme in mediaeval studies at the University of Notre Dame and will take comprehensive exams next spring. My dissertation will deal with Jewish-Christian relations in the Rhineland c.1050-1250.
On a more exciting note, Alicia recently gave birth to our third child, Charity,
who, in
the few days she has been alive, has already won our hearts.