Jeffrey Shoulson
Professor of English
Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
Professor of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Professor of English
Ph.D. English Literature, Yale University (1995)
M.Phil. Renaissance Studies, University of Cambridge (1990)
A.B. English Literature, Princeton University (1988)
Research Interests: Early modern literature and culture; Jewish-Christian relations; Christian Hebraism; Jewish literature; The Bible as literature.
Having recently completed a book on conversion in early modern Europe, Professor Shoulson is at the beginning stages of a new project, one that examines the cultural and literary history of the English Bible. Specifically, he is interested in how Jewish learning, Jewish interpretations, and Jewishness in all its various manifestations and understandings figures in–and sometimes haunts–the various efforts at translating the Bible into English, beginning with the late medieval Wycliffite Bible and through the different translations that appeared in early modernity, culminating in the King James Version and beyond.
Education
A. B., Princeton University
M. Phil., University of Cambridge
Ph. D., Yale University
Areas of Expertise
Early Modern Literature and Culture
Jewish-Christian Relations
Christian Hebraism
Religion and Literature
Jewish Literature
Biblical and Rabbinic Literature
Bio:
Milton and the Rabbis: Hebraism, Hellenism, and Christianity (Columbia UP, 2001), which was awarded the American Academy of Jewish Research’s Salon Baron Prize.
Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists, Jews, and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, with Allison P. Coudert (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).