c.v.
Education
Degrees
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Literature (June 2007)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD), San Diego, CA (1998-2007)
Dissertation: “Freud’s Moses: Memory Material and Immaterial”
Master of Music (M.M.) in Performance (May 1997)
Yale School of Music, New Haven, CT (1996-97)
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in English Literature (May 1996)
Yale University, New Haven, CT (1992-96)]
Additional Graduate Education
Certificate in Interreligious Chaplaincy, Graduate Theological Union (2020-present)
Rabbinic Program, Aleph Ordination Program (AOP) (2019-2020)
Davenning Leadership Training Program (DLTI) (2018-2020)
Rabbinic Ordination Program, Academy of Jewish Religion of California (AJRCA) (2017-2019)
Academic Employment
Associate Director of Art and Technology, Culture, Art and Technology Program, Sixth College, University of California, San Diego (September 2011-13)
• Developed and established “CAT 75: Experience Art,” a program that allowed students to fulfill their General Education requirement of “Artmaking” with a new set of courses that consisted of attending concerts, shows, plays and other arts events; meeting with the artists; discussing the experience with the professor and fellow students. Response to program was overwhelmingly positive.
• Developed “Audacious Speculations”: a faculty working group, a collaborative curriculum developed by four professors from different fields, an event showcasing the work of artists, scientists, inventors and dreamers, culminating in an event in which students presented their own “Audacious Speculations” in poster-sessions, performances, and demonstrations.
Lecturer, Culture, Art and Technology Program, Sixth College, University of California, San Diego
CAT 125: Practical Communication and Public Rhetoric, upper division writing course (180 students)
• “Inventing Traditions” (Winter 2012)
• “Cultures, Communities, and Communication” (Winter 2013)
Lecturer, Program for the Study of Religion, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), San Diego, CA (2008-2010)
• “Introduction to Religion,” lower division lecture course (Spring 2010)
• “Hearing Voices,” upper division lecture course (Spring 2009)
• “Race and Religion,” upper division lecture course (Winter 2009)
Lecturer and First-year Advisor, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University, NY, NY (2006-2008)
• “Moses and Modernity,” upper division interdisciplinary seminar (Fall 2008)
• “Memory and Forgetting,” upper division interdisciplinary seminar (Spring 2006 and 2007)
Lecturer, Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego (2003, 2008-2010)
• “Psychoanalysis: Back to Freud and Beyond,” upper division literary theory seminar (Winter 2009)
• “History of Criticism,” required literary theory seminar for undergraduate Literature majors (Spring 2008)
• “Moses and Multiplicity,” upper division seminar in English Literature (Spring 2008, Spring 2010)
• “Poetics of Everyday Life,” interdisciplinary upper-division seminar in Cultural Studies (Summer 2003)
Lecturer, Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY), Queens, NY (Fall 2008)
“History of Anti-Semitism,” senior seminar for history and Jewish studies majors
Adjunct Professor, Parsons School of Art and Design, New School University, NY, NY (2004-2007)
• “Inventing Tradition: Mementos, Memorials & Museums,” interdisciplinary core seminar, Department of Design and Management
• “Poetics of Everyday Life,” senior seminar, Critical Studies Department
• “Innovation,” interdisciplinary core seminar, Department of Design and Management
Teaching Assistant, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), San Diego, CA (1998-2000)
• “Creative Non-Fiction,” and “Introduction to Writing Poetry,” Writing / Literature Department
• “Making of the Modern World” (humanities / writing for 1st year students), Eleanor Roosevelt College
Publications
Book
Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question. New York: Fordham University Press (2009).
Awards
• Winner, Gradiva Award for Best Historical Book, National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (2010)
• Finalist, Best First Book in the History of Religions, American Academy of Religion (2010)
Press / Reviews
Laura Levitt, “Review of Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” AJS Review: Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Dec. 2010).
“Forum on Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 96, No. 1 (Jan. 2013):
http://www.jstor.org/stable/full/10.5325/soundings.96.1.0001
• Gil Anidjar, “Return to Moses”
• John L. Jackson, Jr., “The Strange Immortalities of Race”
• Bruce Rosenstock, “Phylogeny Recapitulates Ontogeny: A Jewish Biogenetic Law?”
• Judith Weisenfeld, “On Not Being Jewish... And Other Lies”
Paul Reiter, “The Late Bloomer: Reading Freud's Moses at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century,” Review of Slavet, Eliza, Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question, H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. July, 2012. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=29415
Stephen Frosh, “Review of Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” Psychoanalysis and History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2011): 139-141.
Anthony D. Kauders, “Review of Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” Medaon: Magazin für Jüdisches Leben in Forschung und Bildung (June 2010).
Sander Gilman, “Review of Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies (2010).
“2009 in Art and Culture: Forward Fives,” The Jewish Daily Forward (Jan. 1, 2010).
Radio Interview with Tamara Kramer on Shtetl on the Shortwave, CKUT 90.3 FM, Montreal (Nov. 6, 2009).
Podcast Interview with Sara Ivry, "Race Relations: Freud and his theories on the inheritance of Jewishness," Tablet Magazine (Oct. 21, 2009).
Ben Moser, “New Books,” Harper's Magazine (Oct. 2009), p. 68.
Leo Goldberger, “Freud’s Foreskin, Moses the Egyptian, and Other Tales of God, Man, and Jewishness,”
Goldberg [Danish magazine of Jewish arts and culture], No.15 (Sep. 2009), pp. 8-10.
Josh Lambert, “On the Bookshelf,” Tablet Magazine (Sep. 8, 2009).
Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals
“A Matter of Distinction: On Recent Work by Jan Assmann,” AJS Review: Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Dec. 2010).
“Immaterial Materiality: The ‘Special Case’ of Freud’s Theory of Jewishness,” Jewish Studies Quarterly (2009).
“Freud’s ‘Lamarckism’ and the Politics of Racial Science,” Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2008).
“Jewish American Circumcision” (Review Essay on Leonard B. Glick’s Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America and Eric Kline Silverman’s From Abraham to America: A History of Jewish Circumcision), invited essay, Theology and Sexuality, Vol. 13, No. 3 (May 2007).
Chapters in Books
“Breathing Traces: A Virtual Archive of Life,” published as “Virtuelle Bilder und Doubles mit Hillel Schwartz/Eliza Slavet” in Life Sciences Kunst-Medien, ed. Sabine Flach and Sigrid Weigel. Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG-Weimar (forthcoming).
“Freud’s Theory of Jewishness: For Better and For Worse,” Freud and His Jewish World, ed. Arnold Richards. Jefferson, NC: McFarland (2010).
“Interview with Robert Ashley,” Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language, ed. Brandon Labelle and Christoph Migone. Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press (2001), pp. 203-219.
Other publications
“Portrait of Everything That Is Not In The Book,” Convolution: Journal for Experimental Criticism, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 2010): 150-165.
“Let All Who Are Hungry Come And Eat,” Jewish Week (Apr. 3, 2009).
“Sigmund Freud’s Racial Theory of Jewishness,” invited essay for special issue on “Jews and Race” in Perspectives, the magazine of the Association for Jewish Studies (Fall 2007).
“Die Simpsons: Auf der Suche nach der Stimme Amerikas” [“The Simpsons: In Search of America’s Voice”], Voices Series, Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung, No. 183 (Aug. 9, 2004): 34. Broadcast on Südwestrundfunk (Jun. 11, 2004).
Public presentations
Invited lectures
“Freud, Jewishness and the Development of Psychoanalysis,” Keynote lecture, Narratives of Jewish Lives and Jewish Studies, University of Kansas (Apr. 2011)
“On Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” Joy Ungerleider Jewish Book Month Program Annual Lecture, Temple Israel, Brookline, MA (Dec. 17, 2010)
“On Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” Works-in-progress seminar, New York Psychoanalytic Institute, NY, NY (Dec. 15, 2010)
“On Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai Hospital, NY, NY (Dec. 14, 2010)
“Jan Assmann: Monotheism and Matters of Distinction,” Christianities Reading Group, Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), San Diego, CA (Jun. 2, 2010)
“On Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” Congregation Dor Hadash, San Diego, CA (May 14, 2010)
“On Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” The Richardson History of Psychiatry Research Seminar, The DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, NY, NY (Mar. 17, 2010)
“Scholarship on Freud, Race, and Religion (1980-2009),” Thirty Years of of Austrian/German-Jewish Literary and Cultural Studies, Humboldt Kolleg at Ben Gurion University of Negev, Beer-Sheva, and at the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem, Israel (Mar. 2010)
“On Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” History Seminar for Master’s Students, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (Feb. 23, 2010)
“Freud’s Theory of Jewishness: Lamarckism, Circumcision and the Inheritance of Memory,” Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (Feb. 22, 2010)
“On Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question,” Coronado Lecture Series, Agency for Jewish Education, San Diego, CA (Dec. 16, 2009)
“On Being Jewish By Sigmund Freud,” Panel discussion with Betty Fuks and Liliane Weissberg, Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, PA (Oct. 6, 2009)
“Secret Implications, A Presentation on Racial Fever,” Brown Bag Lecture Series, Program for the Study of Religion, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), San Diego, CA (May 14, 2008)
“Secret Inclinations: Reconsidering Racial Fever,” First Princeton Workshop on Jewish Thought, Program in Judaic Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (May 3-5, 2008)
“Racial Strangeness: Psychoanalysis and the Jewish Question,” Young Scholars Series, Congregation Beth Elohim, Brooklyn, NY (Nov. 2007)
“Freud as a Theorist and Example of the Tensions Between Secularism and Religion,” Panel discussion on “Race and the Quest for a Secular Jewish Identity,” 3rd Annual Posen Project Conference: Teaching Secular Judaism in the University, Miami, FL (Mar. 2007)
“Freud’s Theory of Jewishness: For Better and For Worse” Freud’s Jewish World, Center for Jewish History, NY, NY (Dec. 2006)
“Tarzan & Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between Edgar Rice Burroughs & Sigmund Freud,” „Ich Tarzan“ – Menschenaffen und Affenmenschen zwischen Science und Fiction, Zentrum „Geschichte des Wissens,” Universität Zürich, Switzerland (June 2006)
“Circumcised Supremacy: Freud’s Final Cut,” Freud’s Foreskin: A Sesquicentennial Celebration of the Most Suggestive Circumcision in History, Annual Joy Gottesman Ungerleider Lecture, New York Public Library, NY, NY (May 2006)
Conference presentations
“Moses and Paul, Together Again: Universal Differences, Different Universalisms,” 41st Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Los Angeles, CA (Dec. 2009)
“Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through: Moses the Egyptian and the Psychoanalytic Model of Cultural Discourse,” Wildcard session, “Remembering and Forgetting in the Formation of Religious Subjectivities,” Annual Conference for the American Academy of Religion, Chicago, IL (Oct. 2008)
“Exodus: Where We’re From and What’s Left Behind,”10th Annual Conference of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA): “Arrivals and Departures,” Long Beach, CA (Apr. 2008)
“Jewish, Egyptian and/or African: Freud's Moses and its Curious Consequences,” 9th Annual Conference of the Modernist Studies Association, Long Beach, CA (Nov. 2007)
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Freud and Darwin,” seminar on “Biologies of the Avant-Garde,” 9th Annual Conference of the Modernist Studies Association, Long Beach, CA (Nov. 2007)
“Not So Cut & Dry: Nature & Normalcy in Debates on Neonatal Circumcision & Intersex Genital Surgery,” Annual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Montreal, Canada (Oct. 2007)
“Mired in Materiality: Psychoanalysis and Freud’s Racial Theory of Jewishness,” 38th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, San Diego, CA (Dec. 2006)
“Psychoanalytic Transmissions Beyond Direct Communication,” 7th Annual Conference of the Modernist Studies Association (MSA), Chicago, IL (Nov. 2005)
“Subjectively Pseudoscientific: Freud’s Racial Theory of Jewishness,” Annual Conference of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB), Guelph, Ontario, Canada (July 2005)
“Mediating Memory: ‘Tradition’ in Freud’s Moses and Monotheism,” Conference on Orality, Literacy and Memory, Rice University, Houston, TX (Oct. 2003)
“Inherited Memory: An Examination of Freud’s Lamarckism,” Annual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Atlanta, GA (Oct. 2003)
“Breathing Traces: An Aural Archive of Living,” Archiving Modernism Conference, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada (June 2003)
“Public Disturbances: Noise, Muzak, Art,” Sound Escape Conference, Trent University, Ontario, Canada (June 2000)
“Appropriating Harry Partch,” Beyond Babel Conference, Western Humanities Alliance, UCSD (Oct. 1999)
Conferences and Panels: Organizer / Chair
"Philosemitism and Its Paradoxes," Seminar organizer, 45th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, MA (Dec. 2013)
“Monotheism and Its Discontents,” Panel organizer, 41st Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Los Angeles, CA (Dec. 2009)
“Exodus: ‘Where We’re Goin’/Where We’re From,’” Seminar-organizer / moderator, 10th Annual Conference of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA): “Arrivals and Departures,” Long Beach, CA (Apr. 2008)
“Moses and Modernism,” Panel-organizer, 9th Annual Conference of the Modernist Studies Association (MSA), Long Beach, CA (Nov. 2007)
Freud’s Foreskin: A Sesquicentennial Celebration of the Most Suggestive Circumcision in History, Event-Organizer, Annual Joy Gottesman Ungerleider Lecture, New York Public Library, NY, NY (May 2006); featured in the New Yorker, New York Sun, Chronicle of Higher Education, and TimeOut
“Modernism and its Mysterious Transmissions,” Panel-Organizer, 7th Annual Conference of the Modernist Studies Association (MSA), Chicago, IL (Nov. 2005)
“Occult Abandonment in Modernist Epistemology,” Moderator, 7th Annual Conference of the Modernist Studies Association (MSA), Chicago, IL (Nov. 2005)
“Freud, Reiter, and Mayr: Racial Science and Ideology, 1930s-1950s,” Panel organizer, Annual Conference of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB), Guleph, Ontario, Canada (July 2005)
Academic Honors / Grants
Jewish Studies Grant for project on “Moses, Memory and Identity,” Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University (2007)
Graduate Student Fellowship, Center for the Humanities, UCSD (2004-05)
Dissertation Grant, Literature Department, UCSD (Fall 2003)
Graduate Student Research Grant, Literature Department, UCSD (1999, 2000, 2002)
German Language Fellowship, Deutsche Akademische Austausch Dienst (DAAD) (Fall 2000))
Creative Work
Haggadah for the Wicked Child, a text that lies between literature, literary criticism and liturgy
Julius, moving still life with commentary and music, video, 13 minutes (2005)
Breathing Traces, sound installation / exhibit of aural archive (May 2003): Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, UCSD
Virtualities & Duplicities / Breathing Doubles, sound installation-performance (June 2002): Hamburger Bahnhof (Museum of Contemporary Art), Berlin, Germany
Breathing Traces Berlin, sound installation proposal, Berlin Jewish Museum (2001)
Music to Listen to Traffic By, a relaxation CD for urban dwellers (1999-2000): Broadcast on Canadian Public Radio, June 2000, as part of the Trent Radio Art Festival
Noise, Muzak, Art: The True Story of ‘Drive By Muzak,’ video, 16 minutes (2000)
Drive By Muzak, public sound installation in food-court (1999): Featured in Spaced Out: Southern California Vernacular, a curated group show, UCSD
Breathing Space, sound installation (computer, sound equipment): Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, UCSD (1999)
Languages
German
Spanish
Biblical Hebrew