People
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
Pre-Modern and Modern Eastern Europe; Jewish history
Office: Harris Hall #317
Phone: 847-467-3399
E-mail: yps
northwestern.edu
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern (Ph.D. Moscow, 1988; Brandeis, 2001) is the Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and a Professor of Jewish History. He teaches a variety of undergraduate-level courses that include Jewish History II, 1492-1789; Jewish History III, 1789-1948; East European Jewish History I, 1250-1917; East European Jewish History II, 1917-1991; as well as advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah; Origins of Zionism; Ukraine: History and Culture; and Slavic-Jewish Literature. He holds a Ph.D. in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University (2001) and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Moscow University (1988). He has received several grants and awards, including Rothschild (Yad Hanadiv) Fellowship, Fulbright, Ephraim Urbach Doctoral Award of the Memorial Foundation of Jewish Culture, the National Endowment for the Humanities Grant, and a Northwestern University Distinguished Teaching Award. He has been a Sensibar Visiting Professor at Spertus College in Chicago; a Visiting Scholar at École des Hautes Études Sociales in Paris; and a Visiting Professor at the University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Ukraine; and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has been appointed a Fulbright Specialist on Eastern Europe; a Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and a Visiting Professor at the Free Ukrainian University in Munich. He has published several books, including Jews in the Russian Army, 1827-1917: Drafted into Modernity (2008), The Anti-Imperial Choice: the Making of the Ukrainian Jew (2009, winner of the American Association of Ukrainian Studies book award), and Lenin’s Jewish Question (2010). His books Evrei v Russkoi armii (2003) and Evreiskii vopros Leninu (2012) appeared in Russian, his chapters for the three-volume Toldot yehudey Rusya (2011-2012) appeared in Hebrew, and his Anty-impers’ka al’ternatyva book will appear in 2013 in Ukrainian. He has finished a new book The Golden-Age Shtetl and together with his colleague Dean Bell is working on a documentary history of the Jews in early Modern World, 1450-1750.
