Plotnick Prize Winners

2022

  • Eliza M Helmers '22 Conflict and Coexistence: Exploring Egyptian, Jewish, and Egyptian-Jewish Narratives of Identity
  • Gabriel M Chang-Deutsch '25 Reproducing the Hebrew Kings: Spinoza as a Critic of Revisionist Zionism
  • Allison B Pittman '25 Striking Out: Jake's Fight for American Manhood in Abraham Cahan's Yekl
  • Ana M Sumbo '22 Conceptualizing Black Life Within Afro-pessimism
  • Gabriel A Modisett '25 Yekl and Jewish Self Hatred

2021

  • Daniel Garcia-Barnett '22, "An Analysis of Many Colors: A Discussion of the Characterization of Joseph Through Gendered Thematic Elements"
  • Jack Kurtz '21, "The Politics of Hip Hop and Rap in Jerusalem"
  • Carson Peck '22, "Red Hot Mamas and Jazz Sensations: The Motivation and Development of the Jewish-Black Musical Identity in America"
  • Gavin Walsh '24, "The implications for the modern European Jew in Nathan the Wise"

2020

  • Elisabeth Brontë Jenkins '20, "The Feminist Problem: An Examination of Orthodox Jewish Attitudes towards Women as Reflected in the Journal Tradition"
  • Eliza M. Helmers '22, "Salim Halali and Anne Frank: Spectrums of Experience"

2019

  • Sarah Kovan '19, "Fruitless: Reconciling Infertility and Advanced Reporductive Technologies with the Hebrew Scriptures in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Communities"
  • Dan C. Korff-Korn '18, "Hebrew Nation & Jewish People: Confronting American Jewry's Ongoing Identity Crisis"

2018

  • Sahil Abbi, '20,  "Tel Aviv as a Case Study on Corporatist, Statist, and Neoliberal Jewish Urbanism"

2017

  • Burack, Emily '17, "We are Speaking of Jewish Survival': The Emergence of the Jewish Defense League"
  • Farkas, Sandor '17, "The Domes of al-Haram al-Sharif in Palestinian National Identity"
  • Wien, Elise '17, "Third Night"

 

2014

  • Marissa L. Wizig '14, "Our Minds Toward Masada"

2013

  • Gabrielle A. Mezochow '13, "Constructing a Survivor: The Americanization of Jewish Immigrants After the Holocaust"
  • Paola Ortega (MALS),  "The Literature of Extremity: A Style for the Unspeakable"

2012

  • Kurt Prescott '12, Chapter from a Religion thesis "From Dan to Beersheba." The chapter discusses archeological evidence from Tel Dan and argues for its Israelite identity and for its significance in interpreting biblical accounts of the Jerusalem temple.
  • Nathan Gusdorf '12, Chapter from a Philosophy thesis "Adorian Marxism: The Concept of Critique." The chapter defends Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment from Habermas' criticism by retracing the structure of the dialectic and showing that the violence of fascist anti-Semitism is a specific, possible but not a necessary, outcome of the dialectic.

2011

  • Saul E. Zebovitz '11, "The Modern State of American Jewish Education"
  • Claire E. Scott '11, "Deutschkron: Ich Trug den Gelben Stern"
  • Kurt W. Prescott  '12, "Pilgrimage to Sinai? Understanding Kuntillet Ajrud in the Context of Religious Pluralism"

2010

  • Nathaniel F. Obler '10, "Spinoza's Shadow: Jewish Modernities in Maimon, Hess, and Freud"
  • Tien-Tien L. Jong '10, "Responses to Kant's Moral Philosophy from Spinoza, Buber, and Levinas"

2008

  • Timothy M. Baker '08, "All that Glitters: Considering the Spanish Golden Age in Light of its Evidence and its Constructed Histories"
  • Jacob L. Schindel '09, "Secularity and Judaism in Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl"

2007

  • Dana S. Altshuler, MALS, "Imagining and Imaging Anti-Semitism: Jewish Self-Hatred in 20th Century Literature and Culture"
  • Ashley B. Graham '07, "A Jewish American or an Americanized Jew? Eastern European Jews in German Jewish Institutions in New York City, 1880-1914"
  • Timothy M. Baker '08, "Hath Not a Jew...? Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Anti-Judaism from April 1933 to November 1933"

2006

  • Sara A. Givner '06, "Secular Yiddish Culture and Jewish Identity in America: A Study of New York-based Yiddish Schools and Summer Camps, 1930-1960"

2005

  • David Kerem, "On the Film Rendition of Yorim Kaniuk's Himmo King of Jerusalem"

2004

  • Samuel Stein '04, "Iron Wall' Politics : A Look at Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism and Israel Following the Six-Day War "

  • Elisheva M. Hirschman-Green '04, "Other' in a Community of 'Others' : the Jews of District Six, Cape Town 1880-1920 "

2003

  • Magdalena Panz '05, "Three Caskets and the Three Rings: Solving Riddles in the Merchant of Venice and Nathan the Wise"

2002

  • Sandeep Ramesh, '05, "Hybridity or Theoretical Chaos? The Location of Culture or the End of Culture? An Analysis of Homi K. Bhabha's Framework of Hybridity and Its Drastic Shortcomings in Relation to the Holocaust"