Emilie Amar-Zifkin is the Harwood Visiting Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at
Franklin & Marshall College. She received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale
University. She also holds an M.A. in the History of Judaism from the University of
Chicago Divinity School and a B.A. in Theology and Theatre, with a concentration in
stage management, from Fordham University.
Dr. Amar-Zifkin is a social historian of Jewish-Christian relations. Her research
asks how Jews and Christians who shared urban space saw, heard, and (mis)understood
one another, especially through public ritual: the processions, liturgies, and funerals
by which each community made itself visible and audible to the other. She is currently
completing her first book, Acting Out in Ashkenaz: Performance, Perception, and the Drama of the Everyday, with Medieval Institute Publications. Drawing on her training in stage management,
the book reads medieval sources the way a stage manager reads a production, attending
to the set, lighting, sound, costumes, and props of everyday encounters. In doing
so, it treats religious identity as something performed for, and perceived by, an
audience of neighbors. She is in the early stages of a second book, Death After Death: Social Obligation and the Afterlife of Care, on what medieval Ashkenazi Jews believed they owed their dead, and vice versa. Her
other research interests include sensory studies, disability studies, and liturgical
history. Her writing has appeared in the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception
and on TheTorah.com, and is forthcoming in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern
Studies.
Before coming to F&M, Dr. Amar-Zifkin was the Simon and Ethel Flegg Postdoctoral Fellow
in Jewish Studies at McGill University and the Igor C. Kaplan Postdoctoral Fellow
in Christian-Jewish Relations at the University of Toronto. At F&M she teaches Introduction
to Judaism, Antisemitism and Visual Culture, Religion and the Senses, and a Connections
course on Jewish-Christian encounters.
