FACULTY - Justin Daniel Cammy

Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature
Co-director of the Program in Jewish Studies
Seelye Hall 203
(413) 585 3639
jcammy@email.smith.edu

Justin Cammy, a specialist in modern Jewish literature, received a BA in Middle East Studies and Political Science from McGill University and a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard. At Smith he regularly teaches a course on Israeli Literature which charts trends in literary Zionism from the late nineteenth century until today. Several of his other courses also include significant units on the origins of Zionism, Hebrew/Israeli literature, and contemporary Israeli culture. Students who are interested in pursuing a special studies with him in his areas of interest are invited to contact him. His training in modern Jewish texts makes him particularly interested in exploring tensions between homeland and exile, center and diaspora, language and identity. He is also interested in working with students on comparative Israeli and Palestinian literature.

Professor Cammy has significant experience in the Middle East. He first visited Israel for two months in 1988 as a student. He returned the following winter to further his education, and then enrolled for his junior year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since then he has returned to the region more than a dozen times. In 2007, he spent seven months as a visiting scholar at the Harman Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University. He has also traveled in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Morocco.

As the study abroad advisor for Jewish Studies at Smith, he has visited all of the Smith-approved programs for study in Israel. Students who are considering spending a semester, year, or summer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Haifa University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Tel Aviv University, or the Arava Program for Environmental Studies are invited to be in touch with him to discuss their options.

As a member of the founding committee of the minor in Middle East Studies at Smith, Cammy is committed to bringing events to campus that add to our understanding of the region. He believes that it is the responsibility of an academic program to promote intelligent, sophisticated discussion of complex issues, and to avoid the activist (often radical) agendas that have become the norm in Middle East Studies programs elsewhere.

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