Dr. Jonathan Skolnik

Professional Background

Dr. Jonathan Skolnik is Associate Professor of German at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he is also Core Faculty in Film Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, History, and Judaic and Near Eastern Studies. Dr. Skolnik earned his PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Columbia University in 1999. He was further awarded a 2011-2012 Sosland Fellowship at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies for his fellowship project, “The Terms of Dissimilation.”

Dr. Skolnik is the author of several books, including Jewish Pasts, German Fictions: History, Memory, and Minority Culture in Germany, 1824-1955 (Stanford University Press, 2014). He co-edited Vol. 3 of Hermann Sinsheimer’s Werke (Jüdische Schriften) (Verlag für Berlin und Brandenberg, 2017). His recent articles include, “Memory Without Borders? Migrant Identity and the Legacy of the Holocaust Memory in Olga Grjasnowa’s Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt,” in German-Jewish Literature Since 1990 (Camden House, 2018). In addition, Dr. Skolnik is president of the North American Heine Society, a non-profit organization that helps support research on the poet Heinrich Heine.

Fellowship Research

Dr. Skolnik was awarded the 2020-2021 William J. Lowenberg Memorial Fellowship on America, the Holocaust, and the Jews to conduct research for his project titled, “‘Hanged Together’: Juxtapositions of Antifascism, Antiracism, and Holocaust Memory in American Visual Culture, 1932-1965.” His research will examine the ways that cinema has structured the memory of the Holocaust in the U.S. and beyond, pairing representations of Nazi persecution with critical reflections on racism in American society.

Residency Period: January 1 through May 31, 2021