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Elissa Bemporad

Elissa Bemporad headshot

Research Interests

  • Jews of Russia and Eastern Europe in modern times
  • mass violence, gender, and trauma
  • antisemitism and Jewish responses to (and involvement in) violence under the Soviet regime

Education

  • Ph.D. in History, Stanford University

Contact

Affiliated Campus(es)

  • Queens College

Office Hours

by appointment

Elissa Bemporad holds the Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust and is Professor of History at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award. She is the author of Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (2013), and Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (2019). Elissa is the co-editor of two volumes: Women and Genocide: Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators (2018); and Pogroms: A Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 2021). She serves as editor of Jewish Social Studies. Elissa is currently finishing the first volume of the Comprehensive History of Soviet Jewry (forthcoming with NYU Press), and is at work on a biography of Ester Frumkin.

Awards and Grants

  • Two-time Winner of the National Jewish Book Award in 2019 and 2014
  • Finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in 2013
  • Winner of the Feliks Gross Endowment Award, CUNY 2014
  • Winner of the Frankel Prize in Contemporary History, 2013, for outstanding work in 20th century history
  • American Academy for Jewish Research
  • Israel Institute Faculty Development Grant
  • ARC Distinguished Visiting Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center
  • Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial

Professional Affiliations and Memberships

  • Editor of Jewish Social Studies

Courses Taught

  • Modern Jewish history
  • Jews and the Left
  • Jewish Responses to the Holocaust
  • Genocide in Modern Times
  • History of Antisemitism
  • Modern European history
  • Soviet History
  • Women and Gender in Jewish History


Publications

Books

  • Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk, Indiana University Press (2013).

    Book cover: Becoming Soviet Jews

  • The Russian-language translation of Becoming Soviet Jews, Prevrashenie v sovetskikh evreev: bolshevitskii eksperiment v Minske, Moscow: ROSSPEN, Series “History of Stalinism” (November 2016).

    Book cover: The Russian-language translation of Becoming Soviet Jews, Prevrashenie v sovetskikh evreev: bolshevitskii eksperiment v Minske, Moscow

  • Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (Oxford University Press, November 15, 2019).

    Book cover: Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets

  • The Italian-langauge translation Eredita’ di sangue, Roma: Castelvecchi, 2021.

    Book cover: Eredita’ di sangue

  • A Comprehensive History of the Jews in the Soviet Union, vol. I (NYU Press).

Volumes Edited

  • Co-Editor, Co-Author of Introduction: Pogroms: A Documentary History of Anti-Jewish Violence (With Eugene Avrutin). Oxford University Press, 2021.

  • Co-Editor, Co-Author of Introduction: The Pogroms of the Russian Civil War at 100: New Sources, New Trends (With Thomas Chopard). Special Issue of Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. August 2019.

  • Co-Editor, Author of Introduction: Women and Genocide: Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators (With Joyce Warren). Indiana University Press, 2018.

    Book cover: Women and Genocide: Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators

  • Racconti di Y. L. Peretz (Stories by Y. L. Peretz) Book Series in Yiddish Literature and Culture, Elissa Bemporad and Margherita Pascucci eds., Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, May 2014.

  • Trit nokh trit, Step By Step: An Anthology of Contemporary Yiddish Literature, Book Series in Yiddish Literature and Culture, Elissa Bemporad and Margherita Pascucci eds., Firenze: Quodlibet, 2009.

    Book cover: Trit nokh trit, Step By Step: An Anthology of Contemporary Yiddish Literature
Elissa Bemporad headshot

Contact

Affiliated Campus(es)

  • Queens College

Office Hours

by appointment

Books

women and genocide

Women and Genocide: Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators

by Elissa Bemporad Professor, History

Elissa Bemporad and Joyce W. Warren
 

The genocides of modern history–Rwanda, Armenia, Guatemala, the Holocaust, and countless others–and their effects have been well documented, but how do the experiences of female victims and perpetrators differ from those of men? In Women and Genocide, human rights advocates and scholars come together to argue that the memory of trauma is gendered and that women's voices and perspectives are key to our understanding of the dynamics that emerge in the context of genocidal violence. The contributors of this volume examine how women consistently are targets for the sexualized violence that serves as an instrument of ethnic cleansing, how female perpetrators take advantage of the new power structures, and how women are involved in the struggle for justice in post-genocidal contexts. By placing women at center stage, Women and Genocide helps us to better understand the nexus existing between misogyny and violence in societies where genocide erupts.

Published April 2018
Indiana University Press, 2018

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Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (The Modern Jewish Experience

Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk

Indiana University Press, 2013

by Elissa Bemporad Professor, History

Minsk, the present capital of Belarus, was a heavily Jewish city in the decades between the world wars. Recasting our understanding of Soviet Jewish history, Becoming Soviet Jews demonstrates that the often violent social changes enforced by the communist project did not destroy continuities with prerevolutionary forms of Jewish life in Minsk. Using Minsk as a case study of the Sovietization of Jews in the former Pale of Settlement, Elissa Bemporad reveals the ways in which many Jews acculturated to Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s while remaining committed to older patterns of Jewish identity, such as Yiddish culture and education, attachment to the traditions of the Jewish workers' Bund, circumcision, and kosher slaughter. This pioneering study also illuminates the reshaping of gender relations on the Jewish street and explores Jewish everyday life and identity during the years of the Great Terror.

Published April 2013

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