Assistant Professor
Modern Jewish history; Russia and Eastern Europe; nationalism; theory and practice of cultural history

The Johns Hopkins University
Department of History
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore MD 21218

Telephone: 410-516-3325
E-mail: kmoss5@jhu.edu

Office Hours: Thursday 1-3pm

Curriculum Vitae
 

I am a historian of modern Jewish history, focusing primarily on Jewish history in Eastern Europe, Imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union from the 18th to the 20th century. My primary research interests include modern Hebrew and Yiddish culture and the ways in which modern Jews have engaged the pan-European concept and institution of culture more generally; the Jewish encounter with nationalism and the nation form; the sociology of the Jewish intelligentsia in Eastern Europe, the Yishuv, and Israel; language in Jewish society and selfhood in both traditional and modern settings. Secondary interests include the political and cultural history of Imperial Russia; the patterning of ethnicity and nationhood in imperial and nation-state settings; the roles of the market and the state in shaping minority national cultures; and questions of theory and method in cultural history, the sociology of culture, and the historical sciences more generally.

I am currently completing a manuscript provisionally entitled "Jewish Renaissance, Russian Revolution: Nationhood, Selfhood, and the Claims of Culture in a Revolutionary Age." The book uses the Jewish cultural sphere which blossomed in Russia at the 1917-1921 revolutionary watershed as a vantage from which to examine both Russian Jewry's experience of the Revolution and the larger history of 19th and 20th century efforts to create a modern, secular Jewish culture in Eastern Europe in relation to ideals of art, nationhood, and secular individuality. It seeks to contribute to larger debates about the nature and dynamics of cultural nationalism, the relationship between national and revolutionary ideologies and discourses, and the ways in which modern cultural spheres do and do not attain substantial forms of autonomy.

My course offerings at Johns Hopkins include a year-long introduction to Jewish history from antiquity to the present, an introduction to Eastern European Jewish history, and more specialized seminars on:

--modern Jewish culture in theory and practice
--the interplay of high culture, politics, religion, and language in Eastern European Jewish life
--the problem of ‘tradition’ in modern Jewish thought, culture, and religion
--capitalism, class, and social conflict in modern Jewish history
--city, state, and territory in modern Jewish history.

As a member of the History Department's modern Europe faculty, I also teach on general and comparative topics in European history. Recent graduate seminars include:

"The Cultural Sphere"
"Nationalism and Nationhood"

Specialty or Area of Interest

Modern Jewish history 19th-20th c.; Russia (imperial and Soviet) and Eastern Europe; modern Jewish cultural movements; the Jewish encounter with the nation as concept and practice; language and Jewish selfhood; Hebrew and Yiddish literary culture; social theory

Current Projects

[new research]: The Inescapable Nation: Russian and Polish Jewish Life in the Age of Nationalism, 1886-1939

[Book manuscript]: Jewish Renaissance, Russian Revolution: Nationhood, Selfhood, and the Claims of Culture in a Revolutionary Age

 
Recent Publications

“Bringing Culture to the Nation: Hebraism, Yiddishism, and the Dilemmas of Jewish Cultural Formation in Russia and Ukraine, 1917-1919” in Jewish History, forthcoming 2008.
 
“1905 as a Jewish cultural revolution? Revolutionary and evolutionary dynamics in the East European Jewish cultural sphere, 1900-1914” in The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews: a Turning Point?, eds. Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming).
 
"Not The Dybbuk but Don Quixote: Translation, Deparochialization, and Nationalism in Jewish Culture” in Culture Front: Representing Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Benjamin Nathans and Gabriella Safran (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming).
 
“Between Renaissance and Decadence: Literarishe Monatsshriften and its Critical Reception” in Jewish Social Studies, v. 8, 1 (Fall 2001): 153-198.
 
“St. Patrick's Day Celebrations and the Formation of Irish-American Identity, 1845-1875” in Journal of Social History, v. 29, 1 (Fall 1995): 125-148.

"Revolution in Jewish Culture," in A History of the Jews in Russia, v. 3, ed. Michael Beizer (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, forthcoming).

“Printing and Publishing: Printing and Publishing after 1800”; “Ahiasaf”; “Moriah”; “Stybel” [Hebrew publishing houses],” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Gershon Hundert (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming).
 
“Yitshok Leybush Peretz,” [leading modern Yiddish writer] in Dictionary of Yiddish Writers, ed. Joseph Sherman (Columbia, SC: Bruccoli, Clark, Layman, 2007).

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