People

Professor Mednicoff's research deals with broad connections between legal and political ideas and institutions at the national and transnational levels, particularly as these relate to current issues in the Middle East.

Professor Ben-Ur is a historian specializing in Atlantic Jewish history, slavery studies, and the Ottoman diaspora.

Jay R. Berkovitz received his Ph.D. at Brandeis University. His research and teaching focus is on the early modern history of European Jews, with special emphasis on Jewish law, family, ritual, and communal governance.

A linguist by training, Professor Bolozky specializes in Hebrew phonology (sound systems of languages) and morphology (word formation). His work centers on natural phonetically-motivated processes and on word-formation patterns and productivity.

Prof. Caravita's research focuses on native and non-native teachers of Hebrew and Arabic.

Rachel Diana is the office manager and department administrator in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at UMass Amherst.

Professor El-Hibri specializes in classical Arabic historiography and in medieval and modern Arabic literature.

Olga Gershenson is Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies and of Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a multi-disciplinary scholar, with interests at the intersection of culture, history, and film.

Hadi Jorati is a historian of Pre-modern Islamic societies, with a focus on Intellectual History and History of Science.

Jordan Katz is a historian of early modern Jewry, with a focus on Jewish cultural history, history of medicine, and women and gender in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Prof. Majeed's research encompasses various aspects of linguistics, including the history of the evolution of the Persian language.

Dr. Melnick specializes in the post-Medieval Jewish experience with particular interest in European and American Jewry, the Jewish-Christian relationship, Jewish intellectual and cultural history of all periods, as well as African-American history and the Jewish/African-American social and cultural encounter.

Susan Shapiro specializes in Jewish philosophy and philosophy of religion, gender studies, and political and cultural theory.

Professor Taylor specializes in the history of the Middle East in the early modern period (1400-1800). 

James E. Young is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of English and Judaic & Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he has taught since 1988, and Founding Director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at UMass Amherst.

Dr. Zussman specializes in various aspects of Hebrew linguistics, including pragmatics; grammaticization; concession; and discourse particles; and Hebrew as a Second Language.