I am interested in the history of East European and Russian Jewry, as well as modern Jewish History and modern Russian History more generally. My most recent book, Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire, is about the grassroots movement among early twentieth-century Russian and Polish Jews to engage with culture in a public way. My first book, The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage, examined how and why a Yiddish theater received support from Stalin and the Soviet government through World War II, and why it was suddenly destroyed after the war. I am also co-director of AHEYM (The Archive of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories), a project that collects videotaped oral histories of Yiddish speakers in Eastern Europe, mostly about Jewish life in the region before the Second World War. I have published articles and reviews on Jewish cultural and intellectual history in numerous periodicals, including Slavic Review, Studies in Jewish Civilization, Ab Imperio, Kritika¸ Jews in Eastern Europe¸ East European Jewish Affairs¸ Studies in Contemporary Jewry¸ Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook¸ Cahiers du Monde Russe and others. I teach courses in Jewish history and Russian history, and serve as Director of the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program.
Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
"Yiddish Constructivism: The Art of Goset," in Susan Goodman, ed., with essays by Zvi Gitelman, Vladislav Ivanov, Jeffrey Veidlinger, and Benjamin Harshav, Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater. (New Haven Yale University Press, 2008).
"The Jewish Question in the Soviet Union, 1917-1953" in Steven A. Usitalo and William Benton Whisenhunt, eds., Russian and Soviet History: From the Time of Troubles to the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).
"Jewish Cultural Associations in the Aftermath of 1905" in Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn, eds., The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
"Du lebst mayn folk: Prince Ruveyni in Historical Perspective," in Joseph Sherman and Gennady Estraikh, eds, David Bergelson: From Modernism to Socialist Realism (Oxford: Legenda, 2007).
