Offer Dynes

Ofer Dynes is Leonard Kaye Assistant Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He received his Ph.D. in Jewish Studies at Harvard University (September 2016) and held a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University (2016-2018). Before coming to Columbia, he was an Assistant Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he taught classes in eastern European Jewish literature and history and served as the head of the Program in Yiddish Studies. His research has been supported by the Posen Society of Fellows, The Center for Jewish History in New York, The Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow in Leipzig, the Austrian Fund for Social Sciences, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, among other institutions.

Dynes specializes in the literature and cultural history of Eastern European Jewry from the 18th to 21st centuries. He has a particular interest in the nexus of literature and political thought. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled The Fiction of the State: The Polish Partitions and the Beginning of Modern Jewish Literature (1772–1848).  He has also recently co-edited a special volume of Prooftexts, entitled The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Literature in Europe, with Naomi Seidman (University of Toronto). Dynes is a co-founder and organizer of the Hebrew Lab Faculty Seminar, a New-York based workgroup for scholars in Hebrew Literature.