Scholarship and Biography

EUGENE R. SHEPPARD is Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History and Thought in the Department of Near Eastern & Judaic Studies. He serves as Director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, and an editor of the Tauber Institute Series with Brandeis University Press. He is the author of Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile: The Making of a Political Philosopher (Brandeis University Press 2007). He is an editor of the Tauber Series on Brandeis U. Press and is a founding co-editor of The Brandeis Library of Modern Jewish Thought which has produced more than a dozen volumes. He is currently writing a book that examines the life, writings, and reception of Valeriu Marcu (1899-1942), a German language popular historical writer, essayist, and Publizist of Romanian Jewish origin. What is particularly of interest to Sheppard about Marcu is the way in which his historical sketches, profiles, and more extended book length historical studies traced and expressed the origins of the present and unfolding horizon of the future. Sheppard sees Marcu's peculiar style of writing as expressing political and philosophical modes of Hegelian realism, a model of self-conscious skepticism regarding forms of naive or nefarious idealism.

Links

Writing the Counter-BookJoshua Cohen with Eugene Sheppard
Shaul Magid on the Jewish Radicalism of Meir Kahane A Discussion with Shaul Magid and Eugene Sheppard

Honors

Mellon Seminar Fellow
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (United States, New York), 1995
History of Ideas Course Award for HOID/NEJS 154a: World Without God?: Theories of Secularization
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 2010
Visiting Scholar Bucerius Institute for Contemporary German History and Society
University of Haifa (Israel, Haifa), 2010
Harry Starr Fellowship in Judaica, The Center for Jewish Studies and the Department of History
Harvard University (United States, Cambridge), 2013-2014
Mandel Humanities Center Course Development: Spring 2016 "Crime and Punishment" with David Sherman
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 2015-2016
Humanities Program Course Proposal with David Sherman for team taught course on Crime and Justice
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 2017-2018
GFSRA Grant (NEJS) for Research into Romanian Jewish Intellectuals in Germany and France
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 2017-2018
Norman Fund Faculty Award for Trip to Romania
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 6/1/2022
Course Development Award for Antisemitism: An Intellectual History
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 10/1/2023

Organizational Affiliations

Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History and Thought, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University

Affiliated Faculty, Department of Philosophy, Brandeis University

Affiliated Faculty, Interdepartmental Program in History of Ideas, Brandeis University

Affiliated Faculty, Department of History, Brandeis University

Affiliated Faculty, Interdepartmental Program in European Cultural Studies, Brandeis University

Interim Director, The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, Brandeis University

Education

University of California, Los Angeles
Ph.D.
University of California, Los Angeles
M.A.
University of California, Los Angeles
M.A.
Occidental College
B.A.