Karen Underhill
Associate Professor
Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian Studies
Contact
- Building & Room:
- 1614 UH
- Address:
- 601 S Morgan St.
- Office Phone:
- (312) 413-8175
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.
Recognition: 2024-25 Modern Language Association Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures; 2025 Kulczycki Prize in Polish Studies (Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies); 2025 AATSEEL Best First Book Award; 2025 Wacław Lednicki Award in the Humanities (Honorable Mention), Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA).
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