DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Interests

Geographic Field(s):  Medieval and Early Modern European History; Modern European History: Central/Eastern Europe

Thematic Field(s):  History of Science, Technology, and Medicine; Religious History

Principal Research Interest(s):  Jewish History, Medieval European History

Biography

David Shyovitz (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2011) is Associate Professor of History and Director of NU's Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies. His research focuses on medieval European intellectual and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on Jewish history and Jewish-Christian relations. He is the author of A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz (Philadelphia, 2017), which was awarded the John Nicholas Brown Prize for best first book in Medieval Studies by the Medieval Academy of America. His current book project, "O Beastly Jew!" Jews, Animals, and Jewish Animals in the Middle Ages, explores the overlapping ways in which Jewish and Christian authors and artists distinguished humans from animals, and Jews from Christians, over the course of the Middle Ages. 

Affiliated Programs

• Crown Center for Jewish and Israel Studies

Publications

• "Unearthing the 'Children of Cain': Between Humans, Animals, and Demons in Medieval Jewish Culture," in Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History: From the Middle Ages to Modernity, ed. Iris Idelson-Shein and Christian Wiese (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 157-86.
  
• "Was Judah he-Ḥasid the 'Author' of Sefer Ḥasidim?" Jewish History 34, 1-2 (2021): 31-52.
• A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).
• "You Have Saved Me from the Judgment of Gehenna’: The Origins of the Mourner’s Kaddish in Medieval Ashkenaz,” AJS Review 39 (2015): 49-73.
• “Beauty and the Bestiary: Animals, Wonder, and Polemic in Medieval Ashkenaz,” in The Jewish-Christian Encounter in Medieval Preaching, ed. Jonathan Adams and Jussi Hanska (London: Routledge, 2015), 215-39.
• “Christians and Jews in the Twelfth Century Werewolf Renaissance,” Journal of the History of Ideas 75 (2014): 521-43.

Teaching Interests

Recent Course Offerings:

• HIST 101: The Crusades
• HIST 101: The History of Heaven
• HIST 201-1: European Civilization I (1000-1750)
• HIST 203-1: Jewish History, 750-1492
• HIST 300: Jewish Messianic Movements
• HIST 300: Monsters and the Occult
• HIST 347: Christians and Jews
• HIST 393: The Blood Libel
• HIST 393: What is "Antisemitism"?
• HIST 392-95: Nature and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages
• HIST 392-95: Jewish Law
• HIST 430: Field Seminar in Medieval European History (Graduate Seminar)
• HIST 492: Jews in Medieval Europe (Graduate Seminar)

Recent Awards and Honors

• John Nicholas Brown Prize for Best First Book in Medieval Studies, Medieval Academy of America, awarded to A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz (2021)
• Fellow, Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (Fall 2017)
• Faculty Honor Roll, Northwestern University Associated Student Government (2016-17)
• Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize, awarded by the Medieval Academy of America to “Christians and Jews in the Twelfth Century Werewolf Renaissance” (2016).
• Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, International Fellowship in Jewish Studies and Jewish Culture (2015-16).
• Yad Hanadiv/Beracha Foundation Fellowship, Jerusalem, Israel (2014-15).