Hebrew Union College Announces Appointment of Karen E. H. Skinazi, Ph.D., as Director of the Louchheim School

Hebrew Union College has announced that Karen E. H. Skinazi, Ph.D. will be the new Director of the Louchheim School for Judaic Studies, the undergraduate program in Jewish Studies at the University of Southern California, effective July 1, 2025.

Dr. Skinazi joins Hebrew Union College’s Louchheim School, following her successful tenure at the University of Bristol in the UK, where she served with distinction as Associate Professor of Literature and Culture as well as Director of Liberal Arts. The search committee was led by Sarah Bunin Benor, Ph.D., Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Linguistics and Director of the Jewish Language Project, who noted, “I’m thrilled that Dr. Skinazi will be joining our faculty and leading the Louchheim School. Her scholarship, teaching, administrative skills, and amazing energy will serve Hebrew Union College and USC well.”

Skinazi is an interdisciplinary scholar and held several administrative positions.

During her time in Bristol, Skinazi served as Programme Director of the Liberal Arts BA and MA degrees and Study Abroad Coordinator for Liberal Arts. She recently finished a term as President of the British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies (BIAJS), organizing the 2024 international conference on “Jews, Gender, and Sexuality,” which saw 150 participants from 16 countries, and she is a member of BIAJS’s executive board.

Skinazi completed her undergraduate work at York University in Toronto and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. at New York University. She has held previous and concurrent academic roles at Oxford University, University of Birmingham, Princeton University, University of Alberta, and Fordham University.

Skinazi writes widely on late 19th-century through contemporary Jewish literature, film, and television, and occasionally forays into history, as well. Her 2018 monograph Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture was awarded Honourable Mention for the Robert K. Martin/Canadian Association for American Studies Book Prize. In the wake of the monograph, Skinazi co-edited the 2020 special issue of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies on the art and feminism of Orthodox and Haredi women with Dr. Rachel Harris of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne.

Skinazi wrote the entry on “Twenty-First Century Jewish Literature by Women in the US” for the Jewish Women’s Archive’s Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, and she has a chapter on postwar Jewish American fiction, as well as a case study on the author Allegra Goodman, in the Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume 8: American Fiction Since 1940. She also wrote an interview-based essay on Mizrahi writers for Matrilineal Dissent: Women Writers and Jewish American Literary History.

In addition to Shofar, Skinazi’s articles have also appeared in several other academic journals, including Legacy, MELUS, Open Library of Humanities, American Studies, and the Canadian Review of American Studies. Her more recent research examines the productive interface between Muslim and Jewish women’s lives, literature, film, and activism.

She is frequently called on to share her expertise through public talks, articles, and book reviews in the Jewish press, including Jewish Journal, The Jewish Chronicle, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Forward, and Kveller.

The Louchheim School’s current director, Leah Hochman, Ph.D., will step down from her role after fifteen years of distinguished leadership to focus on teaching and her research as Associate Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew Union College, where she teaches classes in medieval and modern philosophy, American Judaism, modern history, and food ethics, and at USC, where she teaches contemporary Jewish literature, Jewish identity, and the academic study of Judaism. “On behalf of all of us at Hebrew Union College, I would like to express our profound gratitude to Professor Leah Hochman who has enriched our educational experience and advanced the field of Jewish studies,” President Andrew Rehfeld, Ph.D., said, “and give a warm welcome to Professor Skinazi as she begins her work at the Louchheim School.”