Assistant Professor of the Practice, German Studies
Lyons Hall Room 210C
Telephone: 617-552-4784
Email: nicholas.block@bc.edu
Modern Jewish Thought
Representing the Holocaust
Literature of Migration: Diaspora, Exile and Homecoming
Vienna Art & Architecture (Summer Abroad)
History of German Literature
Deutscher Film
Intermediate German
Elementary German
German-Jewish literature, Jewish ex libris, modernism, postwar literature, German film, modern Jewish thought, Orientalism, Yiddish
My current manuscript is titled Schlepping Culture: The Jewish Renaissance between German and Yiddish, 1880-1940, for which I have received two awards for published articles and the 2016 Leo Baeck Institute Early Career fellowship. This research details the transnational cultural transfers between German and Yiddish modernism as a result of mass migration. My research interests more broadly engage with German-Jewish intellectual history, Yiddish literature, Jewish-Muslim relations in contemporary German culture, Orientalism, and the quest for a new language in German literature since 1945. I have worked as a translator for the PBS television series Finding Your Roots and as an archivist for the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
CURRENT BOOK PROJECT
Schlepping Culture: The Jewish Renaissance between German and Yiddish, 1880-1940
PUBLICATIONS
“The Place of Yiddish in German-Jewish Studies.” In German-Jewish Studies: Next Generations, edited by Aya Elyada and Kerry Wallach, 101-118. Oxford, NY: Berghahn Books, 2023. doi.org/10.3167/9781800736771.
"Dialogue and Intersection in German Holocaust Memory Culture: Stumbling Blocks and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe." In Minority Discourses in Germany since 1990, edited by Ela Gezen, Priscilla Layne, Jonathan Skolnik, 152-171. Oxford, NY: Berghahn Books, 2022. doi:10.3167/9781800734272.
"Jüdische Exlibris. Traditionelle Motive und moderne Techniken." Jüdische Geschichte & Kultur, Magazin des Dubnow-Instituts 5 (2021): 4-7.
"A Multilingual Turn in German Studies: Premises, Provisos, and Prospects." Die Unterrichtspraxis / Teaching German 52, no. 1. (Spring 2019): 14-31. doi:10.1111/tger.12082.
"The Ex Libris of the German-Jewish Artist Emma Dessau Goitein." In Emma Dessau Goitein: Un'artista europea a Perugia, edited by Fedoro Boco, Maria Luisa Martella, and Gabrielle Steindler Moscati, 43-48. Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts of Perugia. Perugia: Fabrizio Fabbri, 2018.
"A Berlin Republic Convivencia? Ethnic Tensions in the Turkish-German-Jewish Triangle." German Studies Review 40, no.2 (May 2017). doi:10.1353/gsr.2017.0050.
"On Nathan Birnbaum's Messianism and Translating the Jewish Other." The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 60 (2015): 61-78. doi:10.1093/leobaeck/ybv002.
“If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem: The Jewish Exilic Mind in Else Lasker-Schüler’s IchundIch.” Nexus: Essays in German Jewish Studies 2 (2014): 103-120.
“Ex Libris and Exchange: Immigrant Interventions in the German-Jewish Renaissance.” The German Quarterly 86, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 334-353. doi:10.1111/gequ.10186.
BOOK REVIEWS
Review of Jewish Primitivism, by Samuel J. Spinner. AJS Review: The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies 47, no. 1 (April 2023): 200-202. doi:10.1353/ajs.2023.0017.
Review of Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature between East and West, 1919–1933 by Rachel Seelig. German Quarterly 90, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 239-242. doi:10.1111/gequ.12034.
Review of Kafka’s Jewish Languages: The Hidden Openness of Tradition by David Suchoff. German Studies Review 37, no. 3 (October 2014): 678-680. doi:10.1353/gsr.2014.0124.