Martin
Jacobs
Associate Professor of Rabbinic Studies
Associate Professor of Jewish, Islamic &
Near Eastern Studies
Department of Asian & Near
Eastern Languages &Literatures
Program in Jewish, Islamic & Near
Eastern Studies
Mailing Address Office
Campus
mjacobs [AT] wustl
[DOT] edu Wednesdays,
My Research Interests
·
Rabbinic literature and culture from late
antiquity to the Middle Ages
·
Jewish historiography in medieval and
early modern times
·
Medieval Jewish and Islamic travel
literature
·
Jewish-Muslim encounters
“Due
to my rich research and teaching experiences in different academic and cultural
contexts, I am committed to spanning cultural divides, such as those between
Jewish, Islamic, and Christian civilizations, which are often reduplicated by
modern disciplinary boundaries. I have developed an appreciation for
mixed-method and interdisciplinary approaches, and am convinced that, in the
long run, ideas rooted in different subject areas can be cross-pollinated to
yield new approaches and insights.
“Thus
my research interests span Jewish history and thought in a broad sense, from
the emergence of classical rabbinic Judaism in first-century Roman Palestine through
the Jewish encounter with Islamic civilization in medieval and early-modern
times – in any case, the common differentiation among these periods does not
make too much sense when it comes to Jewish history and literature.
“While
the foundation of my research was laid in late antiquity, I later underwent a
process similarly made by classical historians who become more and more
fascinated with the Middle Ages. Now I feel that my solid basis in rabbinics gives me the necessary tools to better understand
medieval and early modern Jewish authors who largely drew on and reappropriated classical Jewish literature.”
Links:
CV Research Publications Courses Lectures
