Joshua Shanes

Joshua Shanes is an historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish history in East Central Europe and its emigrant communities. His research focuses on the process of Jews negotiating new identities under the impact of modernization. His first book, Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia (Cambridge University Press, 2012), traces the contested process by which nationhood became a key category of Jewish identity in the early twentieth century. It upsets notions of Jewish exceptionalism by demonstrating that Zionism, like its non-Jewish counterparts, was first and foremost a movement to construct a national identity for Jews, to forge a modern Jewish cultural nation while simultaneously masking its very modernity. It shows that Zionism was not about escaping Diaspora existence but rather normalizing it. 

Professor Shanes is currently completing two book-length projects. The first is a history of Jewish Orthodoxy that traces the emergence and evolution of the label - and the communities that claim it - from Germany and Hungary into Eastern Europe and eventually America and Israel, explaining how a traditional culture shared unreflexively by most Jews evolved into a self-conscious, voluntary religio-political identity maintained by a determined minority that viewed itself as authentically “religious.” He is also now completing, together with Professor Naomi Seidman, a reader of Orthodox texts. It will offer over two dozen sources, many translated for the first time, including many previously unknown texts by women.

His work can also frequently be found in popular publications such as The Washington Post, Slate, The Conversation, Haaretz, The Forward, and others.

A native of the Chicago suburbs, he completed his B.A. (1993) at the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. (2002) at the University of Wisconsin. Before joining UC-Davis in 2025, he served as Professor of Jewish Studies, and Director of the Arnold Center for Israel Studies, at the College of Charleston. In his spare time, he enjoys text study, political activism, and bridge.