People

Faculty Publications

Jeffrey Shandler

  • Jeffrey Shandler 
  • Shandler, Jeffrey
  • Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies
  • Schools:   Ph.D. Columbia University, M.A. Columbia University, B.A. Swarthmore College
  • Office Address: 14 College Avenue, Miller Hall
  • Phone Number: 848-932-1709

  • Jeffrey Shandler is Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. He received a PhD in Yiddish Studies from Columbia University and has held post-doctoral fellowships at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University. Shandler has also been a visiting scholar at the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Center, Tel Aviv University; the Center for Religion and Media, New York University; the Jewish Studies Program, University of California Berkeley; the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation; the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University; the Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University; the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania; and the Center for Jewish History, New York.

    Shandler is the author of While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 1999); Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture (University of California Press, 2005), a study of contemporary Yiddish culture; Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America (New York University Press, 2009), which analyzes the impact of new communications technologies and media practices on American Jews’ religious life; Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History (Rutgers University Press, 2014), an examination of how Jewish life in East European provincial towns has become the subject of extensive memory, creativity, and scholarship; Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices (Stanford University Press, 2017), which explores memory practices in the largest online archive of video interviews with Holocaust survivors; Yiddish: Biography of a Language (Oxford University Press, 2020); and Homes of the Past: A Lost Jewish Museum (Indiana University Press, 2024), which examines a pioneering effort, undertaken during World War II, to create a museum in New York memorializing Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Among other titles, Shandler is the editor of Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland before the Holocaust (Yale University Press, 2002) and co-editor of Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting (Princeton University Press, 2003) and Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory (Indiana University Press, 2012). His essays have appeared in French, German, Polish, Yiddish, and six other languages.

    Shandler’s translations of Yiddish literature include Mani-Leyb’s children’s classic Yingl Tsingl Khvat (Moyer Bell, 1986) and Emil and Karl, a Holocaust novel for young readers by Yankev Glatshteyn (Roaring Brook, 2006). He has curated exhibitions for the Jewish Museum of New York, the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Shandler served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies and is a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

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

  • The Culture of Yiddish
  • Remembering the Holocaust
  • Modern Jewish Culture: Key Texts

Publications

Homes of the Past: A Lost Jewish Museum Homes of the Past: A Lost Jewish Museum

University of Indiana Press, 2024

 Yiddish: Biography of a Language Yiddish: Biography of a Language

Oxford University Press, 2020

 Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices

Stanford University Press, 2017

 Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History

Rutgers University Press, 2014

 Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory

Indiana University Press, 2012

 Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America

New York University Press, 2009

 Emil and Karl Emil and Karl

Square Fish/Macmillan, 2006

 Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture

University of California Press, 2005

 While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust

Oxford University Press, 1999

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.