JOSHUA TEPLITSKY
On leave, Spring 2022
Associate Professor (Ph.D., New York University, 2012)
Curriculum vitae. Summer 2020
Office: SBS S-317
Email:
joshua.teplitsky@stonybrook.edu
Interests: Early modern Europe, Habsburg Empire, Jewish history, history of the book,
history of epidemic disease.
My work focuses on Jewish life in the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire
and Habsburg monarchy in the early modern period (16th–18th centuries) with an emphasis
on the city of Prague. I am interested in the interconnections between Jews of disparate
locations, as well as the social, cultural, and intellectual exchanges between Jews
and Christians. My book,
Prince of the Press: Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History's Most Enduring
and Remarkable Jewish Library
(Yale, 2019; winner of the Baron Prize for best first book in Jewish Studies in 2019)
explores the movement of Jewish books as commodities and media of exchange in order
to examine the operations of credit and reputation in shaping the political culture
of Jewish life in early modern Central Europe.
That interest in books-in-motion also informs a digital humanities project that I
co-lead called
Footprints: Jewish Books through time and place
. My current research project is a micro-historical study of six tumultuous months
in 1713 in the city of Prague as it was ravaged by plague. I explore the ways in which
Jews were subjected to special scrutiny and restrictions during the epidemic, but
also use the event to uncover aspects of daily life, coexistence, and the rhythms
of Jewish-Christian interaction in this early modern city.
SELECT WORKS
•
Michelle Chesner, Marjorie Lehman, Adam Shear, and Joshua Teplitsky, “Old Texts and
New Media: Jewish Books on the Move and a Case for Collaboration,”
Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor,
Network, and Community
,
edited by Kate Joranson and Robin Kear. Chandos Publishing (2018), 61-73.
•
Joshua Teplitsky, “Jewish Money, Jesuit Censors, and the Habsburg Monarchy: Politics
and Polemics in Early Modern Prague,”
Jewish Social Studies
19, 3 (Summer 2014): 109-138.
•
Plague, Passover, and Perspectives on Social Distancing. Institute for Israel and
Jewish Studies’ Spring 2020 Magazine.
•
A Conversation between Joshua Teplitsky and Magda Teter about Epidemics, Disease and
Plagues in Jewish History & Memory. April 22, 2020