Benjamin WurgaftPh.D. and MA, University of California Berkeley
BA, Swarthmore College
Andrew W. Mellon Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical Studies and Philosophy
Profile:Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft is the first and current Andrew W. Mellon Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Fellow at the New School for Social Research. He received his doctorate in modern European intellectual history and Jewish history from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009. From 2009-10 he served as Lecturer at Berkeley, and joined the New School in Fall 2010. His research interests include the history of continental philosophy and political theory, as well as modern Jewish thought. He also writes on food history from cultural, social and biopolitical perspectives. His current book projects include "Thinking in Public: Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas and Leo Strauss on Intellectuals and Social Responsibility," which began as his Berkeley dissertation and examines the social role of philosophers and political theorists through the works of three Jewish students of Martin Heidegger. He is also co-authoring a volume on world food history for Oxford's New Oxford World History series, and recently completed a book on Jews, class, anti-Semitism and assimilation at New England liberal arts colleges.
Courses Taught:Spring 2012 - Histories of the Future: Utopia, Dystopia and Modernization in 20th Century European Thought, World Food History
Spring 2011 - Histories of the Subject: From Nietzsche to Poststructuralism
Fall 2010 - Intellectuals and their Publics in the Twentieth Century
Thinking in Public: Arendt, Levinas and Strauss on Intellectuals and Social Responsibility (manuscript in preparation)
Food: A World History, with Merry I. White (under contract with Oxford University Press for the New Oxford World History Series. Expected publication in Fall 2012)
Williams College and the Jews: Class, Anti-Semitism and Assimilation at a New England Liberal Arts College. (currently under review at a major university press)
“The Uses of Walter: Walter Benjamin and the Counterfactual Imagination,” in History and Theory, October 2010
“From Heresy to Nature: Leo Strauss’s History of Modern Epicureanism” in Hedonic Reading: Studies in the Reception of Epicureanism, a forthcoming Oxford University Press volume on the history of Epicureanism edited by Wilson Shearin (Stanford University) and Brooke Holmes (Princeton University)
“How to Read Maimonides after Heidegger: The Cases of Levinas and Strauss” in The Cultures of Maimonideanism, James T. Robinson, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2009)
“Persecution and the Art of Critique: Leo Strauss between Secularism and Religion,” in Politics and Culture, special issue on “The Critical,” Winter 2009 Issue 4. Available at:
http://www.politicsandculture.org/2009/11/09/persecution-and-the-art-of-critique-leo-strauss-between-secularism-and-religion/
80 5th Ave, Rm 524
Office Hours:None Fall 2011; TBA Spring 2012
Email:wurgaftb@newschool.eduResearch Interests:European intellectual and cultural history, Jewish history, food history, history of science
Professional Affiliations:American Historical Association, Association for Jewish Studies, European Association for Jewish Studies, University of California Mutli-Campus Research Group on Food and the Body.
Recent Presentations/Exhibits:"Thinking in Public: Leo Strauss and the Problem of "The Intellectual," at the New York Consortium for Intellectual History working group, September 2011
"A Cabal We Deserve: Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and Public Intellectual Culture," at the American Political Science Association Annual Conference, Seattle, September 2011
“Leo Strauss and the Public Intellectuals,” at “Intellectuals and Their Publics,” Third Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference, City University of New York, October 2010
“Against Corpse Tea: Nazi Vegetarianism and Nazi Biopolitics” at “Food and the Nation,” hosted by the Institute for European Studies, UC Berkeley, April 2010
“The Light of the Public Obscures Everything: Arendt Against Political Theology,”
Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference, Los Angeles, December 2009
“Have you re-read Benedict? Jewish anti-Spinozism and Levinas’s Route to Infinity,” at “Levinas and the Sacred,” the third annual conference of the North American Levinas Society, Seattle University, August 2008
