Justin Daniel Cammy
Assistant Professor and Co-director of Jewish Studies
Seelye Hall 203
(413) 585-3639
jcammy@smith.edu

Justin Cammy is a specialist in modern Jewish literature and Eastern European Jewish culture. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University (2003) and his B.A. in Middle East Studies and Political Science from McGill University (1993). He spent his junior year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Click here to view his curriculum vitae.

His scholarly interests in the ways literature interprets and influences modern Jewish history, politics and culture is reflected his course rotation:

CLT 218 Holocaust Literature

CLT 275 Israeli Literature and Film in International Context

CLT 277 At Home with Kafka: Modern Jewish Fiction

JUD 225 Jewish Civilization: Text and Tradition (basis of the major and minor)

JUD 258 American Jewish Literature (dual listed as ENG 230)

JUD 260 Yiddish Literature and Culture

JUD 284 The Jews of Eastern Europe (dual listed as HST 284)

JUD 362 Seminar in Modern Jewish Literature

JUD 110 Yiddish Language and Culture (an interterm course offered in collaboration with Hampshire College and the National Yiddish Book Center)

JUD 400 Students who wish to pursue advanced special studies in Cammy’s areas of interest are invited to be in touch with him.

Professor Cammy’s research currently focuses on Yung-Vilne, the last group of young, politically engaged Yiddish poets, writers, and artists in inter-war Poland. He is completing a manuscript on the literary and cultural history of this group, tentatively called When Yiddish Was Young: Vilna’s Last Generation and the Fate of Eastern European Jewry. His translation from the Yiddish and introduction to Hinde Bergner’s memoir, On Long Winter Nights: Memoirs of a Jewish Family in a Galician Township, 1870-1900, was published in 2005. He is also the co-editor of Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon: Essays on Literature and Culture in Honor of Ruth R. Wisse (2008), which includes more than thirty essays by leading scholars of Jewish literature. He has been an associate editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History since 2005.

As the study abroad advisor for Jewish Studies, Professor Cammy is familiar with many academic opportunities for students in the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. He has visited Israel more than a dozen times, most recently for seven months as a visiting scholar at the Hebrew University. His research on Yiddish culture also frequently brings him to Eastern Europe. He is on the academic advisory board of CET Jewish Studies in Prague and has been a faculty member or lecturer at Yiddish summer programs at both the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst and Tel Aviv University.

In addition to his teaching and administrative responsibilities in Jewish Studies, he is a member of the Program in Comparative Literature, the Program in Middle East Studies, and the Program in American Studies.

In his volunteer time, Cammy is currently serving as President of the Board of Directors of Lander-Grinspoon Academy: The Solomon Schechter School of the Pioneer Valley.

In 2006 Justin Cammy was awarded the Sherrerd Prize for Distinguished Teaching at Smith.