John Efron is the Koret Professor of Jewish History at U.C. Berkeley. He specializes in the cultural and social history of German Jewry. His scholarship is focused on the ways that German Jewry has attempted to reinterpret and reinvent Jewish culture in the wake of its complex encounter with modernity. In particular, he has written on the German-Jewish engagement with medicine, anthropology, and antisemitism. His publications include Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (Yale, 1994), Jewish History and Jewish Memory:...
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1989). Ginsborg combines work in the history of philosophy, especially Kant, with an interest in contemporary philosophy, in particular the theory of meaning and the philosophy of mind. Much of her published work has focused on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, arguing for its importance both to Kant’s own theory of cognitive judgment and to our present-day understanding of cognition. Recently she has been applying what she takes to be the central insight of the Critique of Judgment to a range of contemporary issues,...
I specialize in Enlightenment and Romantic literature and science, with particular interests in rhetoric and poetics, pre-Darwinian biology, and materialist theories of history, poetry, and nature. My first book, Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life(link is external) (University of Chicago Press, 2017), shows how writers from William Blake to Goethe...
I am an historian of German, European and International History from the late 18th century to the present. I have also an ongoing interest in social, legal and political thought as well as in the theory of history.
My most recent book is an intellectual biography of Reinhart Koselleck and an exploration of his premise that twentieth-century experiences of time require a new theory of history. Currently, I am working on two research projects: a book-length essay on human rights internationalism from imperial beginnings to our global present, and a monograph on everyday...
Professor Rugg’s research has long focused on issues related to self-construction and self-representation, particularly in textual autobiography and visual media. Authorship is another strong allied research interest, with special attention to the authorships and authorial personae of August Strindberg, Mark Twain, Ingmar Bergman, and a range of art cinema directors who perform as authors. In addition to her interest in autobiographical studies, Rugg has drawn inspiration for her research from two of the courses she teaches: “Ecology and Culture in Scandinavia” and “Hyperwhite: Policing...
I have broad philosophical interests of both a systematic and a historical kind. These cross the boundaries of so-called “analytic” and “Continental” philosophy. From the latter tradition I have acquired a strongly historical bent. From the analytical tradition I have gained an appreciation of clarity and logical order.
My training in philosophy began with the study of Greek and Latin at the Beethoven Gymnasium in Bonn. At the Universities of Bonn and Munich I subsequently came to develop an interest in symbolic logic and, in particular, in the work of Gottlob Frege but also became...
