Biography
Eli Rosenblatt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His interests span Jewish ideas and cultures across the Americas, with particular interests in the United States and the Caribbean.
Research Interests
- Modern Judaism
- American Jewish Studies
- American Religions
- Yiddish and Ashkenazic Culture
- Creole Studies
Research Description
Dr. Rosenblatt’s research and teaching illuminates Jewish texts, ideas, and practices in the nineteenth and twentieth century Atlantic. His forthcoming monograph, titled Creole Israel: The Jewish Atlantic World After Slavery, takes up traditional tools in Jewish Studies - Hebrew, Yiddish and co-territorial languages - but repositions multilingualism to reconsider the historical role of Creole and African Diasporic cultural formations in American Jewish life. His most recent publication “A Prayer for Jewish Militiamen” offers a new translation and analysis of original Hebrew liturgy produced and chanted in a synagogue during the final stages of the Boni Maroon Wars in early 19th century Suriname.
Education
PhD University of California, Berkeley
BA Sarah Lawrence College
Grants
Full-Year Fellowship, Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Michigan
Courses Taught
REL 120: History of Judaism
Additional Campus Affiliations
Department of Religion
Recent Publications
Rosenblatt, E. (2023). Alexander de Lavaux’s Map of Suriname: Suriname, 1806. In A. M. Brodsky, & L. A. Leibman (Eds.), Jews Across the Americas: A Sourcebook, 1492–Present (pp. 155-159). (Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History). NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479819331.003.0043
Rosenblatt, E. (2023). Prayer for Jewish Militiamen: Suriname, c. 1805–1806. In A. M. Brodsky, & L. Arnold Leibman (Eds.), Jews Across the Americas: A Sourcebook, 1492–Present (pp. 147-150). (Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History). NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479819331.003.0041
Rosenblatt, E. (2021). A Sphinx upon the Dnieper: Black modernism and the Yiddish translation of race. Slavic Review, 80(2), 280-289. https://doi.org/10.1017/slr.2021.79
Rosenblatt, E. (2021). Review: A.M. Glaser's Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish poetry of struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine. East European Jewish affairs, 51(1), 127-129. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501674.2021.1952029
Rosenblatt, E. (2019). If You’re Woke You Dig It: William Melvin Kelley. In S. Marcus, & C. Zaloom (Eds.), Think in Public: A Public Books Reader (pp. 303-308). (Public Books). Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/marc19008-027