Lisa Silverman
- Professor, History
- Professor, Jewish Studies
Education
- PhD, Yale University
- MA, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
- BA, Yale University
Teaching Schedule
Courses Taught
- History/Jewish 358 - The Jews of Modern Europe: History and Culture
- History 364 - History of the Holocaust
- History/Jewish 379 - Introduction to Jewish History
- History 398 - Challenges in Holocaust History and Representation
- History 950 - Holocaust History and Memory
- History 850 - Antisemitism after the Holocaust
Teaching Interests
- Jewish History from antiquity to the present
- Modern European Jewish history and culture
- Gender and Jewish history
- Holocaust history and representation
- Antisemitism
Research Interests
- Modern European Jewish history
- German and Austrian Jewish cultural history
- Photography and Film
- Gender and Jewish history
Biographical Sketch
Lisa Silverman received a BA in political science from Yale University, an MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a PhD in German Studies from Yale University. In 2022 she served as Michael Hauck Visiting Professor for Interdisciplinary Holocaust Research at the Fritz Bauer Institute for the History and Impact of the Holocaust at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main. She specializes in modern German and Austrian Jewish cultural history, with a focus on gender, visual culture, and antisemitism. She is author of Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars (Oxford, 2012) and co-author with Daniel H. Magilow of Holocaust Representations in History: an Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2015; 2nd ed. 2019). Her next book, The Postwar Antisemite: Culture and Complicity after the Holocaust, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
Books
Silverman, Lisa. The Postwar Antisemite: Culture and Complicity after the Holocaust. Oxford University Press, 2025. (Forthcoming)
Silverman, Lisa, and Daniel H. Magilow. Holocaust Representations in History: an Introduction. Bloomsbury, 2015. 2nd edition 2019.
Silverman, Lisa. Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars. Oxford University Press, 2012. Paperback 2015.
Silverman, Lisa, and Deborah Holmes, ed. and intr. Jews, Jewish Difference and Austrian Culture: Literary and Historical Perspectives. Austrian Studies 24 (2016).
Silverman, Lisa, and Arijit Sen, ed. and intr. Making Place: Space and Embodiment in the City. Indiana University Press, 2014.
Silverman, Lisa and Deborah Holmes, ed. and intr. Interwar Vienna: Culture between Tradition and Modernity. Camden House, 2009.
Selected Publications
Silverman, Lisa. “Stadt mit Jüdinnen: Misogyny and Antisemitism in Hans Karl Breslauer’s Die Stadt ohne Juden (1924).” Feminist German Studies 39:1 (2023): 51–72.
Silverman, Lisa. “Rethinking Jews, Antisemitism, and Jewish Difference in Postwar Germany.” The Future of the German-Jewish Past: Memory and the Question of Antisemitism, ed. Gideon Reuveni and Diana Franklin, 135–46. Purdue University Press, 2021.
Silverman, Lisa. “Der Film ohne Juden: G.W. Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse (1925).” Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema, ed. Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein, 178–95. Berghahn, 2021.
Silverman, Lisa. “Hilde Spiel’s Freud: Jews, Exile, and a Viennese Legacy.” Freud and the Émigré: Austrian Émigrés, Exiles and the Legacy of Psychoanalysis in Britain, 1930s-1970s, ed. Elana Shapira and Daniela Finzi, 217–31. Palgrave, 2020.
Silverman, Lisa. Review of T. S. Kord, Lovable Crooks and Loathsome Jews. Antisemitism in German and Austrian Crime Writing Before the World Wars in Quest - Issues in Contemporary Jewish History 17 (2020).
Silverman, Lisa. “On Jews and Property in Provincial Central Europe: Leopold Kompert’s 1848 Publications.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 18:4 (2019): 424–42.
Silverman, Lisa. “A Delicate Balancing Act: Fashion, Gender, and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Vienna before 1938.” Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture, and Viennese Modernism, ed. Elana Shapira, 281–96. Böhlau, 2018.
Silverman, Lisa. “Revealing Jews: Culture and Visibility in Modern Central Europe.” Review Essay. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 36:1 (2018): 134–60.
Silverman, Lisa. “‘Nicht jüdeln:’ Jews and Habsburg Loyalty in Franz Thedor Csokor’s Dritter November, 1918” Religions 8.4 (2017).
Silverman, Lisa. “Absent Jews and Invisible Antisemitism in Postwar Vienna: Der Prozess (1948) and The Third Man (1949).” Journal of Contemporary History 52:2 (2017): 211–28.
Silverman, Lisa. “Beyond Antisemitism: A Critical Approach to German Jewish Cultural History.” Nexus 1: Essays in German Jewish Studies, ed. William Collins Donahue and Martha B. Helfer, 27–46. Camden House, 2011.
Silverman, Lisa. “Leopoldstadt, Judenplatz, and Beyond: Rethinking Vienna’s Jewish Spaces.” East Central Europe 42.2-3 (2015): 249–67.
Silverman, Lisa. “Art of Loss: Madame d’Ora, Photography, and the Restitution of Haus Doranna.” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 60 (2015): 173–90.
Silverman, Lisa. “Strangers on Familiar Ground: Austrian Jewish Writing on Vienna” H-NET Reviews (2012).
Silverman, Lisa. "Max Reinhardt between Yiddish Theatre and the Salzburg Festival." Jews and the Making of Modern German Theatre, ed. Jeanette R. Malkin and Freddie Rokem, 197–218. University of Iowa Press, 2010.
Silverman, Lisa. “Reconsidering the Margins: Jewishness as an Analytical Framework.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 8:1 (2009): 103–20.
Silverman, Lisa. "Elias and Veza Canetti: German Writing, Sephardic Heritage." The Worlds of Elias Canetti: Centenary Essays, ed. William Donahue and Julian Preece, 151–70. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.
Silverman, Lisa. “Zwischenzeit and Zwischenort: Veza Canetti, Else Feldmann, and Jewish Writing in Interwar Vienna." Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 26:1–2 (2006): 29-52.
Silverman, Lisa. “Repossessing the Past? Property, Memory and Austrian Jewish Narrative Histories.” Austrian Studies 11 (2003): 138–53.