714 Main Street Millis, MA 02054 Phone: 508.763.6251 Fax: 508.793.8816 E-Mail: olitvak@clarku.edu I. Education Ph.D. Columbia University, 1999, with distinction, Jewish history. DISSERTATION: The Literary Response to Conscription: Individuality and Authority in the Russian- Jewish Enlightenment. Dissertation advisor: Michael F. Stanislawski, Nathan J. Miller Professor of Jewish History, Columbia M.Phil. Columbia University, 1995, with distinction. Major field, Jewish history, minor field, Russian history. M.A. Columbia University, 1994. THESIS: The Language of Enlightenment: N. H. Wessely s Words of Peace and Truth. B.A. Columbia College, 1992. History, Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. HONORS THESIS: Reckoning with the Historical Self: Simon Dubnow s Book of Life. II. Employment Michael and Lisa Leffell Chair in Modern Jewish History/Associate Professor, Department of History, Clark Director, Center for Jewish Studies, Department of Judaic Studies, SUNY, Albany. Assistant Professor, Department of History and the Program in Judaic Studies, Princeton Editor, Painting and Sculpture, The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 2008-Present 2007-2008 1999-2007 2002-2008 Preceptor, Contemporary Civilization, Columbia 1997-1998 Visiting lecturer in modern Jewish history, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow. 1995-1996 III. Honors and fellowships Harry S. Starr Fellowship in Judaica, Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard Rabbi Sally J. Priesand Visiting Professorship of Jewish Women s Studies, Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion. Spring 2011 Spring 2010 NEH Summer Stipend. 2009 NEH Summer Institute Fellowship, Russian and Soviet Visual Culture, 1863-1937, New York Public Library. Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania. 2008 Spring 2003
Page 2 Philip and Beulah Rollins Bicentennial Preceptorship, Princeton 2002-2005 Gillian R. Whiting Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. 1998-1999 National Foundation for Jewish Culture Dissertation Grant 1997-1998 Richard Hofstadter and President s Fellowship, Columbia University, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The Elsberg Prize for Excellence in Modern History, Columbia University 1992-1997 1992 IV. Publications A. Books Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). Haskalah: The Romantic Movement in Judaism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012). Zionism before Herzl: The Religious Origins of Modern Jewish Political Culture (in-progress). B. Articles Emancipation Anxiety in the Jewish Fin de Siècle, The Fin de Siècle World, ed. Michael Saler (London: Routledge, 2013, forthcoming). Found in Translation: Sholem-aleichem and the Myth of the Ideal Yiddish Reader, Translating Sholem Aleichem: History, Politics and Art, ed. Gennady Estraikh, et. al. (Oxford: Legenda Press, 2012), 6-24. In the Evil Kingdom of Things: Sholem-aleichem and the Writing of Everyday Life in Russian-Jewish Literature, Jews in the East European Borderlands: Essays in Honor of John D. Klier, ed. Eugene M. Avrutin and Harriet Murav (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 83-105. Khave and Her Sisters: Sholem-aleichem and the Lost Girls of 1905, Jewish Social Studies, n. s. vol. 15, no. 3 (Spring/Summer 2009): 1-38. Rome and Jerusalem: The Figure of Jesus in the Creation of Mark Antokol skii, The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times, ed. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 441-496. The Poet in Hell: H. N. Bialik and the Cultural Genealogy of the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, Jewish Studies Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 1 (2005), 101-128. C. Essays Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 8, ed. Tony Michels and Mitchell Hart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in-progress). The God of History, Studies in Contemporary Jewry (forthcoming, 2013). Jocasta Speaks, The Jewish Review of Books, no. 4 (Winter 2011): 15-16. M. M. Antokol skii, The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Gershon D. Hundert, 2 vols.
Page 3 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), vol. 1, 59-61. I. Ia. Gintsburg, YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 1, 600-601. Museums and Exhibitions, YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 2, 1216-1219. Painting and Sculpture, YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 2, 1305-1311. Art Criticism for the Blind: New Approaches to the Life and Work of Marc Chagall, Ars Judaica 3 (2007): 101-110. Urban Diaspora: The City in Jewish History, Jewish Studies Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 1 (2005), 1-7. You Can Take the Historian Out of the Pale But Can You Take the Pale Out of the Historian? New Trends in the Study of Russian-Jewish History, AJS Review, vol. 27, no. 2 (2003), 301-311. Me and Marjorie, Princeton University Library Chronicle 63 (2001-2002): 159-167. D. Book reviews Jonathan Dekel-Chen, et. al., eds., Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), Slavic Review 71 (2012): 695-696. Ezra Mendelsohn and Stefani Hoffman, eds., Russia s Jews and the Revolution of 1905 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), Slavic Review 68 (2009): 698-699. Mikhail Krutikov, Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905-1914 (Stanford University Press, 2001), AJS Review 27 (2003): 349-351. Gabriella Safran, Rewriting the Jew: Assimilation Narratives in the Russian Empire (Stanford, 2000), Jewish Quarterly Review 92 (2002): 243-246. Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge, 1999), AJS Review 26 (2001): 157-59. V. Presentations A. Conference papers Out of the Study House: Jewish Legal Consciousness and the Zionist Revolution in Late Imperial Russia, WORKSHOP ON ZIONISM AND LAW, Princeton University/Cardozo Law School. All Poets Are Jews: Babi Yar and the Paradoxes of Soviet-Jewish Memory, PRESENCE AND ABSENCE: THE FACES OF BABI YAR IN THE ART OF FELIX LEMBERSKY, The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis The Gospel of Marc: Chagall and the Politics of Jewish Renaissance in Bolshevik Russia, JEWISH RENAISSANCE AND RENAISSANCES: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON A CULTURAL THEME, University of Virginia. Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Sholem-aleichem as a Russian Decadent, SHOLEM-ALEICHEM IN TRANSLATION AND IN EUROPEAN CONTEXT, Oxford 10-11 Mar 2013 10 Mar 2011 13-15 Nov 2010 16-18 Aug 2010
Page 4 Playing House: Family Fictions and the Poetics of Personality in the Correspondence between Sholem-aleichem and Mendele the Bookpeddler. ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES ANNUAL CONFERENCE, Los Angeles, CA. My Dear Mrs. Spector: Sex in the Jewish Republic of Letters, GENDER ROLES, EROTIC PRACTICES AND MARITAL STRUCTURES IN YIDDISH LITERATURE AND ASHKENAZIC CULTURE, University of California, Berkeley. Literature and Theft: The Penknife as Mastertext of Yiddish Literature, SHOLEM-ALEICHEM AT 150: A SYMPOSIUM, University of California, Los Angeles. In the Evil Kingdom of Things: Sholem-aleichem and the Problem of Everyday Life in Jewish Literature, JEWS IN THE EAST 19-21 Dec 2009 15-17 Nov 2009 9 Nov 2009 19-20 Apr 2009 EUROPEAN BORDERLANDS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN HONOR OF JOHN KLIER, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. El Lissitzky s Jewish Signature in the Making of Modern Russian Art, ECHOES OF A CENTURY: JEWS, MODERNISM AND THE HOLOCAUST, University of Texas, Dallas. Tevye s Other Daughters: The Russian Origins of Jewish Literature, BEYOND EASTERN EUROPE: JEWISH CULTURES IN 12-13 Feb 2008 17-19 Mar 2007 ISRAEL AND THE UNITED STATES, AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, Rutgers University, New Brunswick. The Eye and the Hand: Jewish Artists and the Politics of Representation in Russia, SYMPOSIUM ON EASTERN EUROPEAN JEWISH MODERNITY: LEGACIES, DIALOGUES, COMPARISONS, Tel Aviv Novel Misreadings: The Jewish Recruit as Reluctant Bourgeois, JEWISH LITERATURE AND HISTORY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONVERSATION, University of Maryland, College Park. War, Migration and the Discovery of Yiddishland, FIRST ANNUAL BERKELEY CONFERENCE ON YIDDISH CULTURE, University of California, Berkeley. The Poet in Hell: H. N. Bialik and the Genealogy of the Kishinev Pogrom, THE URBAN DIASPORA: THE CITY IN JEWISH HISTORY, Princeton From State within a State to State of Mind: The Shtetl in Russian- Jewish Historiography, THE SHTETL: NEW EVALUATIONS OF ITS HISTORY AND CHARACTER, Boston 5-6 Jun 2006 25-26 Apr 2004 28-29 May 2003 17-19 Apr 2002 31 Oct-2 Nov 2001
Page 5 B. Lectures Legal Nation: The Revolt of the Study House and the Beginnings of Jewish Nationalism in Late Imperial Russia, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Seminar, Stanford The Revolt of the Study House: M. L. Lilienblum and the Origins of Zionism in Russia, Jewish Studies Colloquium, Yale Legal Nation: Putting Jewish Back into Jewish Nationalism, Center for Israel and Jewish Studies, Columbia Law and the Inner Man: M. L. Lilienblum s Romantic Revolution, Jewish Studies Colloquium, Harvard Apollo in the Shtetl: The Double Life of Modern Hebrew in Nineteenth-Century Russian-Jewish Culture, The Starr Seminar in Jewish Studies, Harvard Getting Tevye Wrong: Sholem-aleichem s Astonishing Farce of Misperception, Yiddish Cultural Expression in Europe and America: A Special Series of Performances and Talks, Wesleyan Literature and Theft: Sholem-aleichem s Master Narrative, The Kasman Family Lecture in East European Jewish Studies, University of Texas, Austin. The Family Romance of Yiddish Literature, Tauber Center, Brandeis Likeness and Presence: Icons in the Russian Visual Tradition, Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, MA. Death and the Maydl: Jewish Femininity and the Denial of Beauty in the Work of Marc Chagall, Clark The Silver Age in Jewish Literature: Sholem-aleichem and the Revolution of 1905, Frankel Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Marc Chagall s Experiments in Russian-Jewish Self-Fashioning, Harriman Institute, Columbia Beyond the Holocaust Paradigm: Soviet Jews and the Great Patriotic War, Master Teachers Institute in Holocaust Education, Rutgers University, New Brunswick. On the Virtues of Backwardness: The Jewish Romance with Pre- Reform Russia, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, 19 Apr 2013 5 Feb 2013 30 Jan 2013 14 Nov 2012 14 Apr 2011 5 Apr 2011 28 Mar 2011 29 Oct 2009 14 Oct 2009 23 Oct 2008 11 Oct 2007 30 Nov 2006 1 Nov 2005 13 May 2004
Page 6 Harvard Writing Jewish History Out of 1492: The Russian Jew as Marrano, Jewish Theological Seminary The Dairyman s Daughters: Sholem-aleichem and the Jewish Anti- Novel in Russia, University Seminar on Slavic Studies, Columbia To Set in Stone: The Archeology of Memory in Russian-Jewish Culture, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY. 20 Mar 2003 7 Nov 2001 20 Feb 2000