Dr Karen Skinazi

Research:

I am interdisciplinary scholar with interests in late 19^th through 21^st-century Jewish, multiethnic, American, and women’s literature and culture. My monograph Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2018) was awarded Honourable Mention for the Robert K. Martin/Canadian Association for American Studies Book Prize. It examines representations of and an emergent literature by Orthodox Jewish women. An excerpt was used as the cover story for the 8 August 2019 edition of The Canadian Jewish News.

In the wake of my monograph, I have continued to work in the field of Jewish Studies. In 2020, I co-edited a special issue of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies on the art and feminism of Orthodox and Haredi women with Dr Rachel Harris of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. An excerpt of our introduction can be read here. I wrote the entry on “Twenty-First Century Jewish Literature by Women in the US” for the Jewish Women’s Archive’s Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, which can be read online, and I have a chapter on postwar Jewish American fiction, as well as a case study on the author Allegra Goodman, in the Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume 8: American Fiction Since 1940, edited by Cyrus R. K. Patell & Deborah Lindsay Williams. My interview-based essay on Mizrahi writers for Matrilineal Dissent: Women Writers and Jewish American Literary History, edited by Lori Harrison-Kahan, Annie Atura Bushnell, and Ashley Walters is now out.

My articles have appeared in a number of academic journals, including Legacy, MELUS, Open Library of Humanities, American Studies, Canadian Review of American Studies, and Shofar. In addition to contemporary Jewish writing, I am interested in the figure of the New Woman in Progressive Era fiction. For my article on New Woman suffragist writer Miriam Michelson, entitled, “Miriam Michelson’s Yellow Journalism and the Multi-Ethnic West,” written with Dr Lori Harrison-Kahan of Boston College, I won the 2016 Don D. Walker Prize for Best Essay in western American Literary Studies. 

In 2012, I published a critical edition of the 1916 novel, Marion: The Story of an Artist’s Model (McGill-Queen’s University Press) by the first Asian North American novelist, Winnifred Eaton (Onoto Watanna), and I have also produced an online collection of Eaton’s Western oeuvre for the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory. I advise on and contribute to the Winnifred Eaton Archive, launched in 2020 by Professor Mary Chapman of the University of British Columbia.

My new research examines the productive interface between Muslim and Jewish women’s lives, literature, film, and activism. With Birmingham novelist Abda Khan, I chaired the Nisa-Nashim Jewish-Muslim Women’s Network West Midlands Book Group. I am also interested in Israel/Palestine Studies and have a chapter in Reel Gender: Palestinian and Israeli Film (Bloomsbury, 2022), edited by Sa'ed Atshan and Katharina Galor.

I served as president of the British and Irish Association of Jewish Studies (BIAJS) and organised our annual conference in July 2024 on the theme of Jews, Gender, and Sexuality. For my service to the field, I also review articles and books for academic journals and presses. I sit on the editorial board of Shofar. I was the media and membership chair of The Society for the Study of Multiethnic Literature of the United States (2012-2015); on the Hadassah Brandeis Research Awards Academic Advisory Committee; and on the board of the Association for Jewish Studies’ Women’s Caucus. I served as a panelist for the Canadian Review of American Studies' Ernest Redekop Essay Prize in 2017, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Research Award in 2018 and 2019, and the Association for Jewish Studies Women’s Caucus Award for Innovative Scholarship in 2019. At Bristol, I am part of the Global Feminisms and American Studies research clusters.

In addition to my regular contributions to conferences and research seminar series, I was the keynote speaker for the conference "Naomi Alderman: Empty Spaces, Untold Stories," held at Bath Spa University in 2019, as well as for the "Conversion and Narrative Expert Meeting for Beyond Religion vs Emancipation: Women's Conversion to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Project," held at Utrecht University in 2019.

Finally, I enjoy disseminating my research through popular venues. I review fiction for the California-based newspaper Jewish Journal and am a columnist for The Jewish Chronicle. I write for such publications as The Conversation, Lilith Magazine, The Forward, Tablet, and Literary Review of Canada. I have spoken at Limmud festivals and synagogue events. I have been interviewed on the radio by Allison Josephs of "Jew in the City" and Petrie Hoskin (BBC Radio London), in a webinar with the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), and on the New Books Network as well as the Bonnets at Dawn podcast. I am also working on a novel of historical fiction, which was supported by the Genesis Jewish Book Week Emerging Writers Programme, and mentored by novelist Tracy Chevalier.

Teaching:

I have convened and contributed to a range of units in the Liberal Arts programme. I also teach American Revolutions in English.

I encourage postgraduate applications from students wishing to work on American literature, women's writing, Jewish culture, multiethnic literature, popular culture, and Muslim writing, particularly those taking an interdisciplinary approach to their research. 

About Me:

I did my undergraduate work at York University in Toronto, and my MA and PhD at New York University in New York. I taught at Fordham University, University of Alberta, Princeton University, and the University of Birmingham before joining the University of Bristol as Director of Liberal Arts in 2018.