Yaakov Lipsker

Assistant Professor of Practice in Humanities and Jewish Studies

Education

  • Ph.D. Jewish Theological Seminary
  • M. Phil Jewish Theological Seminary
  • B.A. Salem State University

Areas of Expertise

  • Modern Jewish History
  • Nations and Nationalisms
  • Late Imperial Russia
  • Diaspora and Transnational Studies
  • Yiddish and Hebrew Literature

Background

I am an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Humanities Program and offer courses on a range of topics in Jewish Studies. My areas of specialization include modern Jewish social, political, intellectual and cultural history, and the interdisciplinary study of nationalism. My current book project examines the transnational history of Jewish nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, by focusing on the origins and development of Zionism in and between the borderlands of the Russian Empire and Ottoman Palestine. As part of my research, I look at how Jewish nationalist ideas were disseminated and received 'from below' through various settings and media, including popular literature, classrooms, and places of work and worship. I grew up in the Boston area but am most recently from New York City.