Adam Shear

Settlement between Ohio attorney general and HUC on the rare book collection. www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Media/News-R...

My colleague Adam Lowenstein is such a great explainer of why horror films (and lit) are worth serious academic study. He even got me to watch a horror film once. www.as.pitt.edu/horror-studi...

I am going to this one: calendar.pitt.edu/event/gender...

With the decline of the humanities in American academia and the hard-sell to students to study anything that happened before 1800, I find it both annoying and gratifying that my university and the art museum next door feature 3 lectures on classical and early modern topics at the same time today!

@sammyshear.bsky.social

48 surreal hours in Damascus — an Israeli reporter’s travelogue from an enemy capital I had no idea what to expect from a visit to Syria, accompanying a US Jewish group to holy sites and meetings with Sharaa government officials. I found a nation poised between healing and fresh chaos,...

I went to a lecture 10 days ago that I though Jill Joshowitz would be at. Her spouse said she had a scheduling conflict and he couldn't say what it was but it was a big deal. And now I know: www.timesofisrael.com/48-surreal-h...

I'll also say that some of your programs/department/centers are really bad at the updating of your websites!

Info about current and past job searches in academic Jewish studies here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
Info about other jobs and results of past searches, please share. (Note: I only post the name of the person hired once they have begun the position or with their permission ahead of that.)

College of Arts & Sciences pauses admission to 20 majors amid portfolio review Syracuse University paused admission into 20 majors in the College of Arts & Sciences without faculty input amid its portfolio review.

“Syracuse University paused admission to 20 majors in the College of Arts and Sciences without faculty input” dailyorange.com/2025/09/coll...

Classics + following the pre-med curriculum= applicant for med school; Biology + following the pre-med curriculum= applicant for med school.

"to provide skills"--in the American liberal arts model, major + general ed requirements is what provides skills like critical reading, writing, quantitative analysis etc. Skills for a specific profession happens in grad/professional school or in an undergrad school like engineering or nursing.

Looking forward-- would be interesting to take this and compare it to say, Oxford Handbook for Jewish Studies (2002) and see how the field is discussed now--what's different since the beginning of the century and what had stayed the same.

Thursday September 25, 5-6:30 pm, Cathedral of Learning, 6th floor, Humanities Center

French Patisserie’s Latest Darlings? Babkas That Buck Tradition.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/d...
"...babkas laced with pink candied almonds and orange flower water or gooey chunks of chocolate and roasted hazelnuts..."

I think it's a reference back to another article in the NYT about non-traditional babka variations becoming hip in Paris right now. I think it's an internal editing problem.

Interestingly, his NYT obituary in 1964 doesn't even mention his firing from Pitt: www.nytimes.com/1964/10/06/a...

6 flashpoints in the history of academic freedom in Pittsburgh From Pitt to CMU to CCAC, Pittsburgh universities have faced clashes over speech, politics and academic freedom for nearly a century.

Interesting reading on academic freedom cases in Pittsburgh: I was not aware of the Turner case at all. www.publicsource.org/historic-pit...

just a way to exclude the cat-allergic from the good coffee. see, one can always find the pessimistic take these days.

Fair enough. "Hindu" there is an oversimplification to fit in Bluesky. I cheat on this one and email the specialist on South Asian religions in my department.

It is not that hard for people who schedule events to take a calendar a year ahead, look up major Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu holidays on the Internet search engine of choice, and block them out. Cultural literacy should be part of the job.

Good to have some of these pre college also. I loved my 6th grade pre-algebra teacher who would sometimes say he didn’t feel like teaching math that day and read us an O.Henry story. He also told us he didn’t know what pre-algebra was so he just taught us algebra.

I look forward to the discussion of when early modernity ended. Perhaps when Jews received political rights? But then at times in the 19th century one could take a train from late modernity to early modernity. The train announcements switched from French to Latin at the border.

So rude to interrupt your grandfather in the middle of lighting the menorah.

This is terrible news--shocking given the generosity of the Schnitzer gift. In addition to being terrible on the merits, it seems terrible from a long-term perspective of cultivating relationships with donors. Take the money and run?

Our August issue, 29.4, is now available online! This issue opens with an open-access article by Yonatan Glazer-Eytan and Giuseppe Marcocci, "Material Culture and Early Modern Archivality: A Dialogue." brill.com/view/journal...

An interesting read. A comment says that a conference on Wolfson is in the works. I hope attention is paid to his library. When I used to spend time in the Widener JS seminar room c. 2000, saw a lot of his books on the upper shelves, seemingly un-cataloged. Marginalia and ephemera to be discovered!

There is an article on "The Dispatch" by a Yale faculty member that makes specious arguments, stereotypes academic disciplines, misreads the present political moment, and doesn't understand at all how university budgets work. Is this typical for this website (which I have never encountered before)?

Quote from a story on changes at the U of Chicago that notes they are "pausing" doctoral eduction in Classics, Comp Lit, Germanic studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Romance languages and literatures, and South Asian Studies.

Wow. The University of Chicago, a world-class institution whose humanities faculty in the past has included Homi Bhabha & Lauren Berlant & Ralph Ellison & Hannah freaking Arendt, is getting rid of basically every graduate department involving the acknowledgment that other cultures & languages exist.

Jewish Studies Jobs

#JewishStudies jobs--dept websites are always behind. If you have information on who got these jobs please send me an email. I will only post confirmed and public info. If you were on or involved in the search and it was cancelled, you can also let me know. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

And www.pitt.edu/research-mat... featuring my colleague @rmostern.bsky.social