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Andrea Schatz read Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2003, she received her PhD from Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf and was awarded a research fellowship at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies in Philadelphia, where she joined a research group on “Historical and Anthropological Perspectives in Jewish Studies”. From 2004–2007 she was a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Princeton University, teaching in the Religion Department and in the interdisciplinary programs in Judaic Studies and European Cultural Studies. After a few months at the University of Amsterdam, Andrea Schatz joined the Department at King’s College London in September 2008.

In 2009, Andrea returned for a semester to the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies as Ella Darivoff Fellow to pursue her work in a research group on Secularism and Its Discontents: Rethinking an Organizing Principle of Modern Jewish Life (online exhibit).

Since 2011, Andrea is convening the MA in Jewish Studies at King's.

She is a Co-Investigator of the AHRC-funded research project The Reception of Josephus in Jewish Culture from the 18th Century to the Present (Principal investigator: Martin Goodman, Oxford, Co-Investigator: Tessa Rajak, Oxford). The project focuses on the ways in which Jews since the eighteenth century have built on earlier uses of Josephus’ writings for their own purposes, examining the reasons for fluctuations of interest over time and in different places and seeking to understand how preferences were influenced by contemporary issues and how they in turn had an impact on them.

Andrea is also book reviews editor of the Journal of Jewish Studies and co-convenor of the Jewish history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research.

• Jewish thought and practice in early modern and modern times, Jewish-Christian contacts between Venice and Amsterdam, Berlin and London
• The Enlightenment and its critics
• Jewish and post-colonial perspectives on religion, secularism, and the "Orient"
• Jews and multi-religious societies in literature and film

Andrea focuses on the world of European Jews in the modern period. Their creative and complex approaches to issues of religion and culture, nation and diaspora, language and citizenship are at the centre of her research projects. In view of current debates on the Enlightenment, secularism and colonialism, she explores what it might mean that Jews were – in various different ways – always already involved in shaping European modernity. Her book on the Hebrew language in the eighteenth century, its religious and secular contexts and its renewal as a modern language of the Jewish nation in the diaspora was published in 2009. Currently, Andrea is working on a research project that analyses how Jews used the Christian concept of the “Orient” when taking up issues of religion, culture and visibility in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

• Sprache in der Zerstreuung: Zur Säkularisierung des Hebräischen im 18. Jahrhundert [Language in the Diaspora: The Secularization of Hebrew in the Eighteenth Century], Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009, 304 pp.

Edited volumes (selected)

• Yiddish: A Diasporic Path to Modernity, JSQ 15.1 (2008) (guest editor)
• Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Jewish Enlightened Discourse, ed. Resianne Fontaine, Andrea Schatz and Irene Zwiep, Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007
• Janusfiguren: "Jüdische Heimstätte", Exil und Nation im deutschen Zionismus [“Jewish Homeland“, Nation and Exile in German Zionism], ed. Andrea Schatz and Christian Wiese, Berlin: Metropol, 2006
• Der Differenz auf der Spur: Frauen und Gender in Aschkenaz [Tracing Difference: Women and Gender in Ashkenaz], ed. Andrea Schatz and Christiane E. Müller, Berlin: Metropol, 2004.

Articles (selected)

• Interrupted Games: Lessing and Mendelssohn on Religion, Intermarriage and Integration, in: Lessing Yearbook 39 (2012), 51–72.
• Resisting Secularism? Grace Aguilar and Isaac Leeser on English Bibles, in: AJS Perspectives, Spring 2011, 10–11.
• Detours in a “Hidden Land”: Samuel Romanelli’s Masa ba‘rav, in: Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition, ed. Ra’anan Boustan, Oren Kosansky and Marina Rustow, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011, 164–184.
• Travelling Clothes: Imitation and Transculturation in Isaac Euchel’s Letters of Meshullam (in German), Aschkenas 18-19 (2010), 321–338.
• Shared Territories: Topography, Genealogy and Jewish German literature (in German), in: Jüdische Studien und Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Eva Lezzi and Dorothea Salzer, Berlin: Metropol, 2009, 483–514.
• ‘Peoples Pure of Speech’: The Religious, the Secular, and Jewish Beginnings of Modernity, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 6 (2007), 169–187.
• Returning to Sepharad: Maskilic Reflections on Hebrew in the Diaspora, in: Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth Century Jewish Enlightened Discourse, ed. Resianne Fontaine, Andrea Schatz and Irene Zwiep, Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007, 263–277.
• Hebrew, German, Yiddish, and Cultural Difference: The “Babylonian Stories” of the Berlin Haskalah (in Hebrew), in: The Varieties of Haskalah, ed. Israel Bartal and Shmuel Feiner, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005, 13–28.
• Introduction: “ Mendelssohn’s Qohelet musar” (in German), in: Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften: Jubiläumsausgabe, ed. Alexander Altmann et al., vol. 20.1, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2004, XV–XXXVII.
• Introduction: “On Mendelssohn’s Netivot ha-schalom” (in German), ibid., LXI–LXXXI.

Review essay

• Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment. An Incomplete Revolution, JQR 97.1 (2007), 137–146.

CV & Publications (pdf)

Undergraduate

• 4AAT1032 Constancy and Creativity: Jewish Interpretations of Tradition
• 5AAT2044 Religious Difference: Jewish, Christian and Other Perspectives
• 6AAT3052 European Jews and the ‘Orient’

In 2011, Andrea supervised BA dissertations on topics such as Messianism in the Reform movement, Jewish feminism & Rosh Chodesh groups, and Civil Religion in Israel.

Postgraduate

• 7AATC720 Identities & Communities in Flux: Texts & Methods in Jewish Studies (coordinator)
• 7AATC740 Jewish Perspectives on Religion, Culture and Public Space
• MA Dissertation

Andrea is also convenor of the MA programme in Jewish Studies and welcomes inquiries about the course from prospective students. 

Andrea welcomes inquiries from prospective PhD students in the following areas:

• Jewish thought and practice in early modern & modern Europe
• Early modern Jewish bibles
• The European Enlightenment and its critics
• Jewish perspectives on secularism and orientalism

Current research students

Wendy Filer: In Pursuit of a Remedy: Issues Arising from the Interrelationship between Jewish Courts and the Secular Legal System in Britain (co-supervision with Dr Laliv Clenman)

Débora Marques de Matos: Hebrew Manuscripts in Portugal
(co-supervision with Dr Peter Stokes, Digital Humanities)

Previous research students

Dr Simon Cooper: Contemporary Covenantal Thought: Interpretations of Covenant in the Thought of David Hartman and Eugene Borowitz (Academic Studies Press 2012).  

Conference papers & presentations (selected)

• Secularisms, Postsecularisms and Beyond, International Workshop: The Traditions of Post-Secular Europe, UCL, 30-31 May 2012.
• Roundtable, Jews & Journeys, 18th Gruss Colloquium in Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 29 April-1 May 2012.
• Interrupted Games: Lessing and Mendelssohn on Religious Difference, International Conference: Lessing and the Jewish Enlightenment, RWTH Aachen University, 23–25 January 2012.
• Origins and Fragments: Moses Mendelssohn on Orientalism and the Hebrew Language, Panel: Language, epistemology and politics in the Enlightenment, Centre for Early Modern Exchanges – Launch conference, UCL, 15-17 Sept 2011.
• The Jewish Enlightenment (Panel), British Society for the History of Philosophy – Annual Conference, University of Sussex, 29–31 March 2011.
• Hebrew Times? Mendelssohn, Orientalism and the Life of a "Dead" Language, International Conference: Cultural Revolution in Berlin: Jews in the Age of the Enlightenment, University of Oxford, 14 Feb 2011.
• New Directions in Early Modern Jewish History II: Continuity or Break (round-table), Association for Jewish Studies–42nd Annual Conference, Boston, 19–21 Dec 2010.
• Inventing Scripture: Origin and Tradition in the Haskalah Library, International Workshop: The Library of the Haskalah: The Modern Jewish Book Market, Its Creators and Its Readers, Tel-Aviv University/Bar-Ilan University, 2–6 October 2010.
• Irresistible Secularism? Time, Language and the Jewish Enlightenment, International Workshop: Ideas of Secularization in Transatlantic Perspectives, Forum on Contemporary Europe, Stanford University, 3–4 June 2010.
• Secularism and Its Discontents (Concluding Panel), International Conference: Secularism and Its Discontents: The View from Jewish Studies, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 3–4 May 2010.
• Orientalism and the Hebrew Language in the Early Haskalah, Seminar, Leo Baeck College, London, 15 April 2010.
• Tradition, Argument and Critique in the Early Haskalah,
  Association for Jewish Studies –41st Annual Conference, Los Angeles, 20–22 Dec 2009.
• East of the Enlightenment: Language, Secularism and the "Orient" in the Early Haskalah, Research Seminar: Secularism & Its Discontents, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies/University of Pennsylvania, 30 Sept 2009.
• Beyond Sinai: Early Modern Approaches to a Diasporic History of the Hebrew Language, Seminar on Jews and Judaism in the Early Modern Period, University of Oxford, 21 May 2009.
• The Antwerp Moment (Concluding Panel), International Conference: The Jewish Book in a Christian World, University of Antwerp, 25–27 June 2008.
• Language and the Limits of Reason in the Early Haskalah, International Colloquium: Science and Philosophy in Ashkenazi Culture: Rejection, Toleration and Accommodation, Institute for Advanced Study, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 8–10 Jan 2008.

Public presentations (non-academic, selected)

• The Jewish Enlightenment and Sepharad, Masorti Kollel, 16 and 23 June 2011.
• The Languages of Synagogues, Workshop: Creating New Jewish Spaces, Finchley Reform Synagogue Rebuilding Project, 13 March 2010.
• Lessing’s Conversions, Panel: Lessing's "Nathan the Wise" (with Simon Richter, University of Pennsylvania, and Elliot Ratzman, Temple University), People’s Light & Theatre, Philadelphia/Malvern, 4 Oct 2009.

Conferences organised (selected)

• International Workshop: Topoi of Time: Jewish Interpretations of Human and Other Temporalities(with Jonathan Boyarin, UNC Chapel Hill), King's College London, 23–25 May 2011.
• International Workshop: What Is a Sacred Language? Perspectives from the Diaspora, King's College London, 12 July 2010.
• International Workshop: Yiddish: A Diasporic Path to Modernity, Program in Judaic Studies/Society of Fellows, Princeton University, 9 April 2006.
• International Colloquium: Sepharad in Ashkenaz – Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Jewish Enlightened Discourse (with Irene E. Zwiep and Resianne Fontaine), Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam, 18–21 February 2002.