Michael Hoberman

PROFESSOR
English Studies School of Arts and Sciences
Michael Hoberman
978.665.3746 Office: Miller Hall 213
Office Hours
Fall 2024

Monday 9 - 10:30 a.m. Please contact via email to set up addition appointments. Thank you!

Courses Taught

Writing I & II (ENGL 1100/1200)
American Literature I: Legends/Massacres and Slavery/Freedom (ENGL 2000)
Ethnic American Literature (ENGL 2650)
African American Literature (19th and 20th centuries) (ENGL 2660/2670)
Storytelling and the Oral Tradition (ENGL 2890)
Jewish American Literature and Culture (undergraduate and graduate levels) (ENGL 3061)
Jewish Literature Around the World (ENGL 3065)
American Novel to 1950 (ENGL 3220)
Folklore in America (undergraduate and graduate levels) (ENGL 3880)
American Novel Since WWII (ENGL 4230)
New England Literature and Culture (Senior seminar)
​Major Author: Philip Roth
American Romanticism
American Art and Literature, 1800-1860 (graduate)
Culture & Literature of Place: Regionalism in America, 1860-2000(graduate)
American Modernism (graduate)

Background

Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst (English and American Studies)
M.A., University of Massachusetts Amherst (English and American Studies)
B.A., Reed College (American Studies)

Jewish American literature and culture
Folklore and oral history
New England literature and culture

My book on Jewish American literature and the sense of place, A Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History was published by Rutgers University Press in December 2018 and was designated a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2019. My other books include New Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America (UMASS Press, 2011).  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS4QF2

My articles on Jewish American literature and history have been published in Tablet Magazine, among other venues:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/judah-benjamin 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/18th-century-jews-american-west

“‘How important, how dignified, do we appear . . . exploring the works of an almighty  Providence’”: Gershom Seixas, early American Jews, and the language of the Enlightenment.” Essay included in The Place of Religion in the Enlightenment, eds. Daniel Fulda, Laura Stevens, Sabine Volke-Burke). Oxford University Press (forthcoming 2021). 

“‘They have with faithfulness and care transmitted the Oracles of God unto us Gentiles’:  Jewish kabbalah and text study in the Puritan imagination.” Essay included in Kabbalah in America: Ancient Lore in the New World, ed. Brian Ogren. Brill (2020). 

“To prove the correctness and authenticity of my statements”: Solomon Nunes Carvalho’s revision of the Western travel narrative.” American Jewish History, 102.2 (April 2018).

“Parking the ark in Niagara Falls: Mordecai Manuel Noah and the imposition of meaning in Jewish American literary history.” Studies in American Jewish Literature, 37.1 (Spring 2018).

“Home of the Jewish Nation: London Jews in the eighteenth-century Anglo American imagination.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 50.3 (April 2017).