Mailing Address: 12 College Avenue
Research Interests
- Jewish memory practices, centering on remembering the Holocaust and prewar Jewish life in Eastern Europe
- Jewish cultural history, centering on the role of communications media, museums, tourism, and visual culture
- Intellectual history of Jewish Studies, especially ethnographic studies of Jewish life in Eastern Europe and America
- Digital humanities in Jewish Studies, centering on archiving, narrative, inventory as a practice of modern Jewish culture
- Yiddish language, literature and culture, centering on language and culture, translation, language learning, Yiddish after World War II
Regularly Taught Courses
Publications

University of Indiana Press, 2024

Oxford University Press, 2020

Stanford University Press, 2017

Rutgers University Press, 2014

Indiana University Press, 2012

New York University Press, 2009

Square Fish/Macmillan, 2006

University of California Press, 2005

Oxford University Press, 1999
- Homes of the Past: A Lost Jewish Museum (Indiana University Press, 2024)
- Yiddish: Biography of a Language (Oxford University Press, 2020).
- Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices (Stanford University Press, 2017).
- Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History (Rutgers University Press, 2014).
- Co-editor, with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, of Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory
(Indiana University Press, 2012). - Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America (New York University Press, 2009).
- Translator, of Emil and Karl, by Yankev Glatshteyn (Roaring Brook Press, 2006).
- Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture (University of California Press, 2005).
- Co-author/co-editor, with J. Hoberman, of Entertaining America: Jews, Movies and Broadcasting (Princeton University Press/The Jewish Museum, New York, 2003).
- Editor of Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland before the Holocaust (Yale University Press/YIVO Institute, 2002).
- Co-editor, with Hasia Diner and Beth S. Wenger, of Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections (Indiana University Press, 2000).
- While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 1999).
- Co-editor, with Dina Abramowicz, of Profiles of a Lost World: Memoirs of East European Jewish Life before World War II by Hirsz Abramowicz, trans. Eva Zeitlin Dobkin (Wayne State University Press/YIVO Institute, 1999).
- Co-author/co-editor, with Beth S. Wenger, of Encounters with the Holy Land: Place, Past and Future in American Jewish Culture (Brandeis University Press/Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania /National Museum of American Jewish History, 1997).
- Editor of The Life and Work of S. M. Dubnov: Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish History by Sophie Dubnov-Erlich, trans. Judith Vowles (Indiana University Press/YIVO Institute, 1991).
Professional Affiliations
- American Academy for Jewish Research: Fellow, 2012 - present.
- American Jewish Historical Society: Academic Council, 2001 – 2015; Executive Committee of the Academic Council, 2006 – 2008.
- Association for Jewish Studies: Board of Directors, 2003-2007, 2009-2015; Vice President for Publications, 2009-2011; President, 2011-2013.
- Center for Jewish History, New York, Academic Advisory Council, 2004 – 2014; Co-chair, 2006 – 2011.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Academic Committee, 2024 – present.