James Loeffler
Assistant Professor (2006)
Office Hours: MW 12-1 and by appointment
Office: 236 Nau
Phone: (434) 924-6408
Email: james.loeffler (at) virginia.edu
Fields & Specialties
Jewish history; European history; history of human rightsEducation
B.A. Harvard University, 1996
M.A. Columbia University, 2000
Ph.D. Columbia University, 2006
Selected Publications
Book
The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).
Foundation for Jewish Culture Sidney and Hadassah Musher Award for Outstanding First Book in Field of Jewish Studies
Association for Jewish Studies Cahnmann Award for Outstanding First Book in the Field of Jewish Studies
American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) Deems Taylor-Béla Bartók Award for Outstanding Ethnomusicology Book
Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies USC Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies for outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eastern Europe or Eurasia in the fields of literary and cultural studies
Journal Articles
"Human Rights as Jewish Politics: Rethinking the NGO-State Relationship at the United Nations San Francisco Conference, 1945," under review.
"The American Jewish Committee’s 1944 “Declaration on Human Rights”: Fleeting Triumph or Early Failure?" draft manuscript.
"Nationalism without a Nation? On the Invisibility of American Jewish Politics," draft manuscript.
“Music,” Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture, ed. Dan Diner, in association with the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture, Leipzig. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler Verlag, forthcoming.
“Do Zionists Read Music from Right to Left? Avraham Zvi Idelsohn and the Invention of Israeli Music,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100:3 (Summer 2010), 385-416.
“Israeli Music at 60: New Perspectives,” Introduction and Guest Editorship of Special Issue of Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online 7:2 (2008-2009).
“Richard Wagner’s Jewish Music: Antisemitism and Aesthetics in Modern Jewish Culture,”Jewish Social Studies 15:2 (Winter 2009 [New Series]), 2-36.
BOOK CHAPTERS
“‘A Special Kind of Antisemitism’: On Russian Nationalism and Jewish Music” and “Three Jews, Two Opinions: Revisiting the Great Yiddish Folk Song Debate of 1901” On the History of Jewish Music in Russia, Volume 3 [Russian], eds. G. Kopytova and A. Frenkel (St. Petersburg: Russian Institute for the History of the Arts, forthcoming).
“Joel Engel and the Development of Jewish Musical Nationalism [Russian],” On the History of Jewish Music in Russia. Volume 2. [Russian], eds. G. Kopytova and A. Frenkel (St. Petersburg: Russian Institute for the History of the Arts, 2006).
English Translation of Vassily Grossman story, “Stary Uchitel’,” in Maxim Shrayer, ed., An Anthology of Russian-Jewish Literature, 1800-2000 (M. E. Sharpe, 2006).
“Di Rusishe Progresiv Muzikal Yunyon No. 1 af Amerike: The First Klezmer Union in the United States” in American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, ed. Mark Slobin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
“Neither the King’s English nor the Rebbetzin’s Yiddish: Yinglish Literature in America,” in American Babel: Literatures of the United States from Abnaki to Zuni, ed. Marc Shell. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).
Awards and Activities
Academic Advisory Council, Center for Jewish History, 2011-2013
New Directions Committee, Association for Jewish Studies, 2010-present
Research Director, Pro Musica Hebraica
Non-Resident Research Fellow, Jewish Music Research Centre, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Academic Vice-Chair, The Jewish Music Forum, American Society for Jewish Music, 2006-present
University of Virginia Buckner W. Clay Endowment Faculty Award, 2011-2012
American Council for Learned Societies/National Endowment for the Humanities/Social Science Research Council Combined Postdoctoral Fellowship for Research on Eastern Europe and Eurasia, 2009-2010
University of Virginia Mead Honored Professors Teaching Award, 2009-2010
Irene Fromer Fellow in Jewish Studies, Columbia University, 2005-2006
Hays-Fulbright Doctoral Dissertation Research Award to Russia and Ukraine, 2003-2004
National Foundation for Jewish Culture Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 2003-2004
Center for Jewish History Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 2002-2003
Wexner Foundation Graduate Fellowship, 1998-2002
Current Research
I work broadly on the intersection of Jewish culture, politics, and identity in modern Eastern Europe, Israel, and the United States. My first book, The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire (Yale University Press, 2010), examines the role of music in the formation of modern Jewish national identity in nineteenth and twentieth-century Russia. Related articles include studies of antisemitism's impact on modern Jewish culture and the place of music in Zionist and Israeli culture. My new book project looks at Jewish participation in the modern human rights movement after World War II, focusing on American and East European Jewish political activity in international legal circles and at the United Nations in the 1940s and 1950s. A related side project reexamines the history of Jewish nationalism in America and its relationship to East European Jewish politics. A sample of this new work can be found here. I also have published extensively in the field of Jewish musical studies, with a specialization in the history of Jewish folk and classical music traditions in Eastern Europe. The artistic fruits of this academic research can be seen in my work with the Pro Musica Hebraica concert series at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.
