Samuel Kessler

Samuel J. Kessler received his BA from New York University and MA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. His scholarship focuses primarily on nineteenth-century responses to Enlightenment and the history of science. He also works on topics in postmodern theory (Foucault) and twentieth-century literature (Roth, Malamud, Durrell). His dissertation, entitled “The Scientific Rabbinics of Adolf Jellinek: Tradition and Enlightenment in Nineteenth Century Austro-German Jewry,” examines the life and works of Adolf Jellinek, chief rabbi of Vienna from 1857 to 1893. It argues that Jellinek’s embrace of scientific methods on behalf of Jewish tradition complicates the narrative of antagonism and divergence that often characterizes histories of religion and science.