Contact Information
707 S Mathews Ave
M/C 166
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Eli Rosenblatt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His interests span Jewish ideas and cultures across the Americas, with particular interests in the United States and the Caribbean.
Research Interests
- Modern Judaism
- American Jewish Studies
- American Religions
- Yiddish and Ashkenazic Culture
- Creole Studies
Research Description
Rosenblatt’s research and teaching illuminates Jewish texts, ideas, and practices in the nineteenth and twentieth century Atlantic. His forthcoming monograph, titled Creole Israel: The Jewish Atlantic World After Slavery, takes up traditional tools in Jewish Studies - Hebrew, Yiddish and co-territorial languages - but repositions multilingualism to reconsider the historical role of Creole and African Diasporic cultural formations in American Jewish life. His most recent publication “A Prayer for Jewish Militiamen” offers a new translation and analysis of original Hebrew liturgy produced and chanted in a synagogue during the final stages of the Boni Maroon Wars in early 19th century Suriname.
Education
PhD University of California, Berkeley
BA Sarah Lawrence College
Grants
Full-Year Fellowship, Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Michigan
Courses Taught
REL 120: History of Judaism
Additional Campus Affiliations
Program in Jewish Culture and Society
Highlighted Publications
"A Prayer for Jewish Militiamen," in Jews Across the Americas, ed. Adriana M. Brodsky and Laura Arnold Liebman (New York: New York University Press, 2023), 147-159.
"A Sphinx Upon the Dnieper: Black Modernism and the Yiddish Translation of Race,” Slavic Review, 80, no. 2 (2021): 280–89. https://doi.org/10.1017/slr.2021.79.
“Slavery,” in Judaism and the Economy, ed. Michael L. Satlow (New York: Routledge, 2019), C11-19 (Digital: https://ingeveb.org/texts-and-translations/slavery-or-serfdom)