Professor of History and Religion
Phone: 269.337.5789
Office: Dewing, room 303-H
Email: jeffrey.haus@kzoo.edu
Education
PhD: Brandeis University
BA: University of Michigan
Profile
Jeffrey Haus joined the faculty at Kalamazoo College in 2005. He has taught in and chaired both the History and Religion departments, and founded the College’s Jewish Studies program.
His primary scholarly interest focuses on the history of the Jews of modern France, specifically the relationship between Jewish communal institutions and the social, economic, cultural, and political influences that shape them. He is the author of Challenges of Equality: Judaism, State, and Education in Nineteenth-Century France (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009), as well as articles exploring the relationship between Jewish philanthropy, death practices, and community in modern France. He served as guest-editor for an issue of the CCAR Journal (Winter 2007) commemorating the bicentennial of Napoleon’s Great San Hedrin, for which he also wrote the introduction. He has written a number of book reviews, and is a regular reviewer for CHOICE magazine. Most recently, he completed an article analyzing Jewish concepts of place and diaspora in Frank Capra’s 1929 film, The Younger Generation. This article will appear in a forthcoming issue of Jewish Film & New Media.
Dr. Haus’s teaching includes Jewish history and ritual tradition; the history and religion of the Jewish people in Europe and America; women and Judaism; the history of Zionism; and Jews in American cinema. He has spoken in many venues, from synagogues to universities, and is a regular instructor for the Holocaust Educators Network of Michigan.
Select Publications:
“The Younger Generation: Jews and Diaspora in Frank Capra’s America” Jewish Film & New Media: An International Journal,
Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2019, 81-101
“Disunity in Death: Jewish Funerals in the Jewish Press in Mid-Nineteenth Century Paris,” in Zvi Jonathan Kaplan and Nadia Malinovich, eds., The Jews of Modern France: Images and Identities, Leiden: Brill, 2016, 271-85.
“Conspicuous Charity and Jewish Unity: the Jewish Loterie in Nineteenth-Century Paris,” in Wealth and Poverty in Jewish Tradition, Leonard Greenspoon, ed., Studies in Jewish Civilization 26; West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2015, 185-202.
Challenges of Equality: Judaism, State, and Education in Nineteenth-Century France, Detroit: Wayne State University Press 2009.
Dr. Haus is the Director of the Jewish Studies Program.
For more information on the Jewish Studies Program, please contact Dr. Haus at 269.337.5789 or via email: jhaus@kzoo.ed