Speaker: Derek Penslar (University of Oxford, U.K.)

Date: January 8, 2015 – Thursday

Time: 14:00-15:30

Venue: R107, Bld7, Songjiang Campus

Language: English

Speaker Biography: Professor Penslar is a comparative historian with interests in the relationship between modern Israel and diaspora Jewish societies, global nationalist movements, European colonialism, and post-colonial states. A native of California, he taught at Indiana University in Bloomington and the University of Toronto before coming to Oxford in 2012. Between 2002 and 2008 he directed the University of Toronto’s Centre for Jewish Studies. He co-edits two scholarly journals, The Journal of Israeli History and Jewish Social Studies, and serves on the editorial board of Israel Studies and The Israel Studies Review. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

His publications include Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870-1918 (Indiana University Press, 1991); Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (University of California Press, 2001); Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2006); The Origins of Israel, 1882-1948: A Documentary History (with Eran Kaplan, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011); and Jews and the Military: A History (Princeton University Press, 2013).