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Michael Berkowitz

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Professor Michael Berkowitz  - Professor of Modern Jewish History

Professor Berkowitz, a native of Rochester, New York, received his BA from Hobart College (Geneva, New York) and his MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin (Madison). At Wisconsin he studied under the late George L. Mosse.

He has received research support from the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas (Austin), the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles), the British Society for the History of Science, the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC), the British Academy, the Convocation Research Fund of the University of London, the Leo Baeck Institute (New York)/DAAD, the American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati), the Wiener Library of Tel Aviv University, the University of Judaism (Los Angeles; formerly west coast affiliate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America), and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before coming to UCL he taught at the University of Chicago, Ohio State University, and the University of Judaism.

Professor Berkowitz's current work is on the engagement of Jews and photography. He is preparing a book tentatively entitled Jews and Photography in Britain:  Connections and Developments, 1850-2007.  Presentations based on ongoing research focus on Jewish networks in the field of radiography, the invention of Kodachrome, the history of photojournalism, and a reconsideration of the career of Helmut Gernsheim.  Work in the pipeline include an essay, "Lost in the transnational:  Photographic initiatives of Walter and Helmut Gernsheim in Britain," for an anthology edited by Leslie Morris and Jay Howard Geller, and "The origins of Zionist tourism in Mandate Palestine:  Impressions (and pointed advice) from the West" for Public Archaeology.

His scholarship has dealt broadly with modern Jewish identity formation and political self-representations, 1881-1948; relationships between art, politics, and culture; sport (especially boxing) and spectacle; the politics of religion in Mandate Palestine; perceptions of criminality and social deviance from early modern times to the present; Jews and German culture; ties between charity and nationalism; and modes of understanding and mis-understanding the Holocaust.

Books:

The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2007 [hardcover, paperback, & electronic]), 321pp.

The Jewish Self-Image: American and British Perspectives, 1881-1939 (London: Reaktion Press, 2000) [US edition: The Jewish Self Image in the West (New York: New York University Press, 2000)], 176pp.

Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914-1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997; paperback, 2002), 305pp.

Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; paperback: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 255pp.

Edited and co-edited volumes:

"We Are Here": New Approaches to Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany, co-edited with Avinoam J. Patt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 357pp.

Fighting Back? Jewish and Black Boxers in Britain, co-edited with Ruti Ungar (London: University College London), in association with The Jewish Museum, London), 117pp + 20 color plates. [unrefereed; produced through UCL Media Services]

Nationalism, Zionism and Ethnic Mobilization of the Jews in 1900 and Beyond (Leiden and New York: Brill, 2004), 321pp.

Forging Modern Jewish Identities: Public Faces and Private Struggles (Parkes-Wiener Series on Jewish Studies), co-edited with Susan L. Tananbaum and Sam W. Bloom (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2003) [hardcover and paperback], 293pp.

Journal articles (last five years or so):

-----Forthcoming: “Emma Goldman’s radical trajectory: A resilient ‘Litvak’ legacy?” in Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (July 2012).

“The Madoff Paradox: American-Jewish Sage, Savior, and Thief,” in the Journal of American Studies, 46, I (2012): 189-202.

“Jewish Fighters in Britain in Historical Context: Repugnance, Requiem, Reconsideration,” in Sport in History, vol. 31, no. 4 (December 2011): 423-443.

“’Jews in Photography’: Conceiving a Field in the Papers of Peter Pollack,” in Photography & Culture, Volume 4, Issue 1 (March 2011): 7-28.

"The Nazi Equation of Jewish Partisans with 'Bandits' and its Consequences," in European Review of History: Revue Européenne d'Histoire 13, 2 (June 2006): 311-33.

Review articles (recent):

“Bloodlands, the Holocaust, and Jewish History,” in BAJS Bulletin, July 2011.

"Photography as a Jewish Business: From High Theory, to Studio, to Snapshot," in East European Jewish Affairs, Vol. 39, No. 3 (December 2009): 389-400.

Chapters in books (recent):

“Jews and Photojournalism: Between Contempt, Intimacy, and Celebrity,” in Die PRESSA/The PRESSA: Internationale Pressausstellung Köln 1928 und der jüdische Beitrag zum modernen Journalismus/International Press Exhibition Cologne 1928 and the Jewish Contributions to Modern Journalism, eds. Suzanne Marten-Finnis and Michael Nagel, Band/Volume II(Bremen: Edition Lumiere, 2012), pp. 627-39

"Perceptions of Jewish Displaced Persons as Criminals in Early Postwar Germany: Lingering Stereotypes and Self-fulfilling Prophecies," co-authored with Suzanne Brown-Fleming, in Avinoam J. Patt and Michael Berkowitz, eds., "We Are Here": New Approaches to Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany, Avinoam J. Patt and Michael Berkowitz, eds. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010), pp. 167-193.

"Kristallnacht in Context: Jewish War Veterans in America and Britain and the Crisis of German Jewry," in American Religious Responses to Kristallnacht, ed. Maria Mazzenga (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009), pp. 57-84.

"Re-Imagining Herzl and Other Zionist Sex Symbols," in Theodor Herzl: From Europe to Zion, eds. Mark H. Gelber and Vivian Liska (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2007), pp. 73-84.

"A More Genteel Antisemitism? Displaced Persons and the Stigma of 'Jewish Criminality' in Literature and Film," in Representations of the Holocaust in Literature and Film, II, ed. Marc Lee Raphael (Williamsburg, VA: College of William and Mary Press, 2006), pp. 11-23.

"Unmasking Counterhistory: An Introductory Exploration of Criminality and the Jewish Question," in The Criminal and His Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective, eds. Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell (New York: The German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 61-84.

"Pälastina-Bilder: Kultureller Konstruktionen einer 'jüdischen Heimstätte' in deutschen Zionismus," in Janusfiguren: "Jüdische Heimstätte," Exil und Nation im deutschen Zionismus, eds. Christian Wiese and Andrea Schatz (Berlin: Metropol-Verlag, 2006), pp. 167-188.

"Cops, Robbers, and Anarcho-terrorists: Crime and Magical Realism's Jewish Question," in Companion to Magical Realism, eds. Stephen M. Hart and Wen-chin Ouyang (Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, New York: Boydell & Brewer, 2005), pp. 131-141.

Active PhD students working with Professor Berkowitz include:

Lida Barner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, MA; UCL, MA), "Intellectual property under the Nazis:  Jews and patents"
Angela Debnath (Toronto, BA; UCL, MA),  "Britain at the birth of Bangladesh"
Kjersti Dybvig, (Oslo; Bergen, Stavanger, MA),  "Literary and historical representations of Jews in post-war Norway"
Felicity Griffiths (LSE, LLB), "Social and religious foundations of the University of London"
Ian Harker (Durham, BA), "Ernst Biberstein:  Lutheran Pastor and SS-man"
Frank Dabba Smith (UC-Berkeley, BA; Leo Baeck College, MAHL; University of Westminster, MA), "Ernst Leitz and Leica during the Second World War"