Faculty and Student News and Awards

Nicholas BaerNicholas Baer

Associate Professor, German

Nicholas Baer has published two books in 2024. His monograph, Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism (University of California Press, 2024), reassesses Weimar cinema in light of the "crisis of historicism" widely diagnosed by German philosophers in the early twentieth century. Through bold new analyses of five legendary works of German silent cinema—The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Destiny, Rhythm 21, The Holy Mountain, and Metropolis—Baer argues that films of the Weimar Republic lent vivid expression to the crisis of historical thinking. With their experiments in cinematic form and style, these modernist films revealed the capacity of the medium to engage with fundamental questions about the philosophy of history. Reconstructing the debates over historicism that unfolded during the initial decades of moving-image culture, Historical Turns proposes a more reflexive mode of historiography and expands the field of film and media philosophy. The book excavates a rich archive of ideas that illuminate our own moment of rapid media transformation and political, economic, and environmental crises around the globe.

Together with Annie van den Oever, Baer also edited the open-access volume, Technics: Media in the Digital Age (Amsterdam University Press, 2024). Featuring 28 leading international media scholars, Technics rethinks technology for the contemporary digital era, with cutting-edge theoretical, historiographical, and methodological interventions. The volume’s contributors explore the ideas of Walter Benjamin, Ursula Le Guin, Bernhard Siegert, Gilbert Simondon, and Sylvia Wynter in conjunction with urgent questions concerning algorithmic media, digital infrastructures, generative AI, and geoengineering. An expansive collection of writings on media technologies in the digital age, Technics is an essential resource for students and scholars of film and media studies, digital humanities, science and technology studies, and the philosophy of technology.

Isaac L. BleamanIsaac L. Bleaman

Associate Professor, Linguistics

Isaac recently published the following:

He also gave the following talks this past academic year:

  • 2021. “Borokhovs yidishe filologye un di legitimkayt fun der yidisher shprakh” [Borokhov’s Yiddish philology and the legitimacy of the Yiddish language]. Workshop (in Yiddish) at graduate research seminar on “The Yiddish Object,” University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture (Zoom).
  • 2021. “The Yiddish sentence: Social meaning reflected in grammatical variation.” Lecture at graduate research seminar on “The Yiddish Object,” University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture and Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies (Zoom).
  • 2021. “Der onhalt fun yidish in nyu-york un di batsiung tsum inyen shprakhnbayt” [Attitudes toward change in a maintained language: Yiddish in New York]. Talk (in Yiddish) given at the Ada Rapoport-Albert Seminar Series in Hasidic Yiddish, University College London (Zoom).
  • 2020. “Attitudes toward change in a maintained language: Yiddish in New York.” Talk given at AJS 52, Washington, DC (Zoom).
  • 2020. Respondent on panel, “Minority Jewish languages in Israel: Documentation and development,” AJS 52, Washington, DC (Zoom).

John EfronJohn Efron

Koret Professor of Jewish History at Berkeley

John Efron's latest book, All Consuming: Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Meat, was published by Stanford University Press in April 2025.

In Judaism, meat is of paramount importance as it constitutes the very focal point of the dietary laws. With an intricate set of codified regulations concerning forbidden and permissible meats, highly prescribed methods of killing, and elaborate rules governing consumption, meat is one of the most visible, and gustatory, markers of Jewish distinctness and social separation. It is an object of tangible, touchable, and tastable difference like no other.

This book explores the contested culture of meat and its role in the formation of ethnic identities in Germany. To an extent not seen elsewhere in Europe, Germans have identified, thought about, studied, decried, and gladly eaten meat understood to be “Jewish.” Expressions of this engagement are found across the cultural landscape—in literature, sculpture, and visual arts—and evident in legal codes, politics, and commercial enterprises. Likewise, Jews in Germany have vigorously defended their meats and the culture and rituals surrounding them by educating Germans and Jews alike about their meaning and relevance.

In this cultural history that extends from the Middle Ages to today, All Consuming takes a broad view of what meat can tell us about German-Jewish identity and culinary culture, Jewish and Christian religious sensibilities, and religious freedom for minorities in Germany. By examining these themes via a single and important food, we are provided with a new window into the rich, fraught, and ultimately tragic history of German Jewry.

Ethan KatzEthan Katz

Associate Professor, History and Jewish Studies

Recent Publications:

  • Antisemitism in Our Midst: Past and Present, co-written with Adam Naftalin-Kelman and Steven Davidoff Solomon, produced by Sarah Lefton (2021). Film. 11 minutes. Independently made.
  • “Muslims as Brothers or Strangers? French Jewish Thinkers Confront the Moral Dilemmas of the French Algerian War.” Extended interpretive essay followed by four short translations from French. Invited chapter in The Stranger in Early Modern and Modern Jewish Tradition, eds. Catherine Allache-Bartlett and Joachim Schlör (Leiden: Brill, 2021).
  • “Who Were the Jewish Underground of Algiers? A Sectorial Analysis of the Paths to Resistance,” in Aviad Moreno, et al., eds., The Longue durée of Jews from Islamic Lands [Hebrew] (Sde-Boker: The Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel & Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2021).
  • “Les chemins variés de la Résistance vers le 8 Novembre 1942: Juifs et Musulmans,” in Nicole Cohen-Addad, Aissa Kadri, and Tramor Quemeneur, eds., 8 novembre 1942. Résistance et débarquement allié en Afrique du Nord (Vulaines-sur-Seine: Éditions du Croquant, 2021).
  • “Le décret Crémieux et son abrogation: Implications pour les participants au 8 Novembre 1942,” in Nicole Cohen-Addad, Aissa Kadri, and Tramor Quemeneur, eds., 8 novembre 1942. Résistance et débarquement allié en Afrique du Nord (Vulaines-sur-Seine: Éditions du Croquant, 2021).
  • “Sartre’s Algerian Jewish Question,” in Manuela Consonni and Vivian Liska, eds., Sartre, Jews, and the Other: Rethinking Antisemitism, Race, and Gender (Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2020).

Recent Talks:

  • “Jewish Resisters That History Forgot: How the Jewish Underground in Algeria Helped Win World War II,” Santa Fe Distinguished Lecture Series, March 17, 2021 (via Zoom).
  • “Jews and Antisemites: The Unlikely Alliance That Paved the Way for Operation Torch,” University of California-Santa Cruz, February 18, 2021 (via Zoom).
  • “Rebel Alliance in Algiers: The Unlikely Band of Jews and Antisemites That Helped Turn the Tide in World War II,” Yale University, Program for the Study of Antisemitism, 18 November, 2020 (via Zoom).
  • “Every Enemy a Nazi, Every Victim Like a Jew: The Omnipresence of Holocaust Talk in the French-Algerian War,” Keynote address, conference on Jewish Studies, the Study of Antisemitism and Postcolonialism: An Unacknowledged Kinship?, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk, Berlin, June 10, 2020 (via Zoom).

Recent Awards:

Honorable Mention for the Koren Prize, given annually for the best article on any subject of French History by a U.S. or Canada-based scholar, Society for French Historical Studies, for: “Jewish Citizens of an Imperial Nation-State: Toward a French-Algerian Frame for French Jewish History,” French Historical Studies 43, 1 (February 2020): 63-84.

Student News and Awards

Aryan Sawant profile picAryan Sawant

Aryan is a 2024 recipient of the Goor Prize for his paper, Caste Dismemberment through Aliyah: How Cochin Jews Used Zionism as a Tool for Social Justice. The paper builds on David Mandelbaum and Walter Fischel’s analyses of social stratification within Cochin Jewish society, with an emphasis on the analysis of lost and undiscovered documents found at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life. The paper argues that— despite internal divisions and differing motivations, Cochin Jews unified in their struggle for aliyah and lessened barriers between their respective communities.

Aryan is a Political Science major at UC Berkeley. His academic and research interests focus on Dharmic communities and their interactions with other sociopolitical groups, particularly through historical and epistemological frameworks.

Dylan Skolnik photoDylan Skolnik

Dylan is an undergraduate recipient of the 2024 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, and has been awarded $2,500. His winning essay was entitled, And Where a Spurt of Our Blood Falls Will Sprout: A Jewish Theory of Identity Creation as Founded in the Lack.

Shirelle Doughty photoShirelle Maya Doughty

Shirelle is a graduate recipient of the 2024 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, along with a cash prize of $2,500, for her paper, The “Sin of Writing” in the Yiddish Press: Kol mevaser (1862-73) and the Transition from Oral to Written Public Spheres.

Leo Franks photoLeo Franks

Leo Franks is a graduate student winner of the 2024 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, and has been awarded $2,500 for his paper, The anti-history of anti-antisemitism: Fred Kormis’ Holocaust sculpture.

Past Student Awards Winners

2022-23 Goor Prize winners:

  • Shirelle Maya Doughty is the graduate recipient of the 2023 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, and was awarded $2,500 for her submission Rethinking the Relationship between Women and Haskalah Literature.
  • Hannah Hillers was an undergraduate recipient of the 2023 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, and has been awarded $2,500. Her winning paper was entitled Iraqi Jewish Identity from the Farhud to Israeli Mizrahi Identity Building.
  • Peter Colias was an undergraduate recipient of the 2023 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, along with a cash prize of $2,500, for his paper The History of the Samaritan Israelites.

2022-23 Brinner Graduate Fellowship winner:

  • Oren Yirmiya was a graduate student and student instructor in the Center for Jewish Studies. He is the winner of the 2023 William Ze’ev Brinner Graduate Fellowship, receiving a cash award of $1,500.

2021-22 Goor Prize winners:

  • Madeline Wyse (G) received $2000 for “Reverent Irreverence: Retelling the Tales of the Bible and Qur’an.”
  • Meghana Kumar (UG ) received $2000 for “What Moral? Sin and Redemption in the David and Bathsheba Story”
  • Juliette Rosenthal (UG) received $2000 for her paper “Newspaper Networks: A Jewish Journalist’s Continued Connections in the Modern Mediterranean.”

2020-21 Goor Prize winners:

  • Wyatt Grauman (UG ) received $1500 for “Analysis on the Generalization of Holocaust Memory and Display”
  • Oren Yirmiya (G) received $1500 for “Forgetting World Literature: Aggadah, Wisdom, and the Crisis of Tradition in Kafka’s On Parables and Tractate Shabbat 138b-139a”

CJS Outstanding GSI Achievement Award:

  • Oren Yirmiya taught JS 39 in Spring 2020 -“Escape Artists in Jewish Popular Culture and Literature: Houdini, Kafka, Kirby, Chabon” and JS 100 in Fall 2020 – “Travelers, Immigrants, Refugees: Introduction to Jewish History and Literature”- and received very positive feedback from his students.
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