Karen Underhill
Associate Professor
Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian Studies
Contact
Building & Room:
1614 UH
Address:
601 S Morgan St.
Office Phone:
Email:
About
Areas of Specialization
Polish Jewish Culture and Literatures; Polish and Yiddish Modernisms; Galician Jewish Culture; Bruno Schulz; Polish-Jewish Relations; Messianism in Romantic and Modern Literature & Philosophy
Additional Interests
Democratic Transition in Central & Eastern Europe
Selected Publications
Bruno Schulz and Galician Jewish Modernity. Indiana University Press, 2024.
Recipient of the 2025 Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies, awarded by
the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies:
https://aseees.org/citation/underhill-kulczycki/.
Bruno Schulz, E.M. Lilien i archeologia polsko-żydowskiego modernizmu” (“Bruno Schulz, E.M. Lilien, and the Archaeology of Polish Jewish Modernism”), Ruch Literacki 2016:6 (339) (Krakow: Polish Academy of Sciences), 655-680.
“Toward a Diasporic Poland/Polin: Zeitlin, Sutzkever, and the Ghost Dance with Jewish Poland.” Poland and Polin: New Interpretations in Polish-Jewish Studies. Irena Grudzinska-Gross and Iwa Nawrocki, Eds. Series: Eastern European Culture, Politics and Societies, Vol. 10. Frankfurt am Main, New York: Peter Lang, 2016.
“Next Year in Drohobych: On the Uses of Jewish Absence” – East European Politics and Societies, August 2011, 581-596.
“Writing in the Third Language: Between Sacred and Profane in Gershom Scholem and Jacques Derrida,” in The Effect of Palimpsest, edited by Bożena Shallcross and Ryszard Nycz. (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publishing Group, 2011), 211-226.
“Ecstasy and Heresy: Martin Buber, Bruno Schulz and Jewish Modernity”, in (Un)maskingBruno Schulz: New Combinations, Further Fragmentations, Ultimate Reintegrations, edited by Dieter de Bruyn and Kris Van Heuckelom. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), 27-47.
“Aux Grands Hommes de la Parole: The Verbal Messiah in Mickiewicz’s Paris Lectures”. Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 716-731.
Education
University of Chicago, Ph.D. (2011), M.A. in Polish Literature and Jewish Studies
University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, B.A. in Comparative Literature