Contact Sharon Portnoff

Education: B.A., St. John's College (Annapolis);
M.Ed., Harvard University;
M.A., Ph.D., Jewish Theological Seminary

Sharon Portnoff
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
On Sabbatical 2011-2012 Academic Year

Specializations:

• Modern Jewish thought
• Holocaust theology
• Dante
• Primo Levi

Among the courses Sharon Portnoff teaches at Connecticut College are The Holocaust and Post-Holocaust Responses, Religious Ethics and Jewish Traditions.

Portnoff also coordinates the Miriam Melrod Lecture in Judaic Studies and the Saul Reinfeld Memorial Lecture in Judaic Studies.

Portnoff's areas of research in progress include Leo Strauss’ influence on Emil L. Fackenheim and Primo Levi’s use of Dante’s Commedia in If This is a Man.

Her forthcoming book is titled Reason and Revelation Before Historicism: Strauss and Fackenheim. University of Toronto (In press.)

Portnoff's recent publications include:  

• "Levi's Auschwitz and Dante's Hell," Society. Volume 46, Number 1. New York: Springer, January/February 2009. Whole Number 297. www.springerlink.com/content/n3047055g2rx0156/ November 21, 2008
• Emil L. Fackenheim: Philosopher, Theologian, Jew (Brill, 2007) (co-editor); "Fackenheim’s Hegelian Return to Contingency" in Emil L. Fackenheim.

Recent conferences she has attended include the Association for Jewish Studies (Los Angeles, 2009) and the American Association of Religion (Chicago, 2008).

Recent seminars in which she has participated include:

• The Tikvah Project on Jewish Thought, Princeton University, Tikvah Working Group "Holiness," 2009-2010
• Jack and Anita Hess Seminar for Faculty, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Teaching about the Holocaust through Eyewitness Testimony: Using Interviews and Memoirs in the Classroom, 2011

Recent presentations she has made include:

• "Fackenheim’s Constructed Holiness and Its Place in Historicism." The Tikvah Project on Jewish Thought, Princeton University, Tikvah Working Group "Holiness," May 24, 2010.
• "Memory and Fiction: Primo Levi and Holocaust Witnessing." The Goldin Lecture in Jewish Thought, Pomona College, Claremont, CA, April 15, 2010.
• "Primo Levi and Dante: The Black Hole at the Center of If This is a Man,"Association for Jewish Studies, Dec. 2008.
• "Emil L. Fackenheim and the Problem of Historicism." Association of Jewish Studies, Los Angeles, CA, December 22, 2009.
• "Kristallnacht: Its Precedences and Ramifications, a Multidisciplinary Approach," Connecticut College, Nov. 2008.
• "The Holocaust’s Uniqueness: The Question of Religion, Narrative and Politics in Primo Levi and Emil L. Fackenheim." Conference of the American Comparative Literature Association, Long Beach, Calif., April 26, 2008.
• "Levi’s Auschwitz and Dante’s Hell: Witnessing and Literature." Presentation sponsored by the Luce Program in Scripture and Literary Arts, Boston University, March 4, 2008.

Portnoff is a member of the Association for Jewish Studies and the American Association of Religion.

Visit the religious studies department website.