Department of Religious Studies
Faculty
Adam Shear
Associate Professor
PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 2003
2603 Cathedral of Learning
412.624.2280
e-mail
Fields
Medieval and early modern Jewish cultural and intellectual history, history of the Jewish book and the impact of print on Jewish culture and thought in the early modern period, the cultural role of Jewish philosophy in the formation of early modern Jewish identities, Jewish thought and intellectual culture in early modern Italy, the Jewish Enlightenment movement and its relation to the medieval and early modern Jewish past
Teaching
Religions of the West, Medieval Jewish Civilization, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish Culture in Medieval Spain, Jewish Mysticism, Modern Jewry, Jewish Historiography, and graduate seminars on Religion and History, Religion, Communication, and Culture
Selected Publications
The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167-1900, Cambridge University Press, 2008. Winner of the 2008 National Jewish Book Award, Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in Scholarship.
"Canonicity and the Authority of Works of 'Jewish Thought': Theoretical Perspectives and Some Examples from the Early Modern Reception of the Kuzari," in Iggud: Selected Essays in Jewish Studies, vol. 1, edited by Baruch Schwartz, Aharon Shemesh, and Avraham Melamed, Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2009
"The Italian and Berlin Haskalah Revisited," Simon Dubnow Institute Jahrbuch Yearbook 6 (2007)
"The Role of Judah Halevi’s Sefer ha-Kuzari in Ashkenaz: A Case Study in the Transmission of Cultural Knowledge," in Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse, edited by Irene Zwiep, Andrea Schatz, and Resianne Smidt van Gelder-Fontaine, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007
"Afterword," in The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim, Leader of Jewry in Early Modern Germany, edited with an Introduction, Commentary, and Translations by Chava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, translated from the Hebrew by Naomi Schendowich, edition edited by Adam Shear, Studies in Jewish History and Culture 12, Brill, 2006
"Judah Moscato’s Scholarly Self-Image and the Question of Jewish Humanism," in Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, edited by David Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004
"Judah Halevi’s Kuzari in the Haskalah: Reinterpretation and Re-imagining of a Medieval Work," in Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From Al-Andalus to the Haskalah, edited by Ross Brann and Adam Sutcliffe, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004
Honors and Awards
National Jewish Book Award, Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in Scholarship for The Kurari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167-1900, 2008
Cahnman Foundation Subvention Grant, Association for Jewish Studies, 2008
Louis and Bessie Stein Term Fellowship, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, fall 2006
Current Projects
"William Whiston’s Judeo-Christianity," in Philosemitism in History, edited by Adam Sutcliffe and Jonathan Karp, Cambridge University Press
"Jews and Judaism in Early Modern Europe, c. 1400-1800," in Cambridge Religious Traditions: Jewish Religion, History, and Culture, edited by Judith Baskin and Kenneth Seeskin, Cambridge University Press
"Jewish Enlightenment Beyond Western Europe," in Cambridge History of Modern Jewish Philosophy, edited by Martin Kavka and David Novak, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
"Medicine, Science, and Jewish Philosophy," in Cambridge History of Judaism, volume 7, 1500-1815, edited by Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
"The Formation of a Canon of Jewish Thought: The Book Culture of Early Modern Italian Jews" (book ms)
"The Jewish Book: Material Texts and Comparative Contexts" (working title) [coeditor with Joseph Hacker]
University Affiliations
Core member of the Programs in Jewish Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Cultural Studies, and the European Studies Center of the University Center for International Studies