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Avinoam Patt

Avinoam Patt headshot

Adjunct Professor

Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies

College of Arts and Sciences
860.768.4963 HJGE 300
Education

PhD, New York University

BA, Emory University


Avinoam J. Patt, PhD worked as the Miles Lerman Applied Research Scholar for Jewish Life and Culture at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). He received his PhD in Modern European History and Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York University. His first book, Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (published by Wayne State University Press, May 2009) examines the appeal of Zionism for young survivors in Europe in the aftermath of the Holocaust and their role in the creation of the state of Israel.

Patt is also the co-editor (with Michael Berkowitz) of a collected volume on Jewish Displaced Persons, titled We are Here: New Approaches to the Study of Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Wayne State University Press, February 2010). He is a contributor to several projects at the USHMM and is a co-author of the source volume, entitled Jewish Responses to Persecution, 1938-1940 (USHMM/Alta Mira Press, September 2011). He has also published numerous articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia articles on various topics related to Jewish life and culture before, during, and after the Holocaust and is director of the In Our Words Interview Project with the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors.

Most recently, he is co-editor of an anthology of contemporary American Jewish fiction entitled The New Diaspora: The Changing Landscape of American Jewish Fiction. In Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for American Jewish Fiction with Mark Shechner and Victoria Aarons, published by Wayne State University Press in 2015 and finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, Anthologies). Patt teaches courses on Modern Jewish History, American Jewish History, the Holocaust, the History of Zionism and the State of Israel, Jewish film, and Modern Jewish Literature among others. He is currently co-editing a new volume on The Joint Distribution Committee: 100 Years of Jewish History (Wayne State University Press, 2017) and writing a new book on the early wartime and postwar memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (under contract with Wayne State University Press). Patt also recently served as one of five inaugural JTS Fellows, a new initiative to expand and diversify The Jewish Theological Seminary’s adult learning opportunities.
  • On ‘Holocaustia’ and the Place of the Shoah in Contemporary Jewish Life: Response to Ian Lustick’s Article, Contemporary Jewry v37(1), April 2017
  • “Holocaust Survivor Diasporas” for the Oxford Handbook to Jewish Diaspora, co-authored with Laura Jockusch (forthcoming)
  • “The JDC in Postwar Germany, 1946” submitted for special issue of Yalkut Moreshet (Tel Aviv University), 2017
  • “We are fighting for three lines in history…it will not be said that our youth marched like sheep to the slaughter”: Writing about Resistance in the Immediate Aftermath of the Holocaust” Beyond Camps and Forced Labour 2015 Conference Proceedings
  • Roman Vishniac and the Surviving Remnant, photo essay published in Roman Vishniac Rediscovered by International Center of Photography, October 2015 (co-authored with Atina Grossmann)
  • “The People Must Be Forced to Go to Palestine: Rabbi Abraham Klausner and the Surviving Remnant in Postwar Germany,” in Postwar Germany (Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 28, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 240–276
  • “Laughter through Tears: Jewish Humor After the Holocaust,” in A Club of Their Own: Jewish Humorists and Contemporary Life, ed. Gabriel Finder and Eli Lederhendler (Studies in Contemporary Jewry, 29) (New York: Oxford UP, December 2016).
  • “Armed Jewish Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto,” in Patrick Henry, ed. Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis (Catholic University Press, 2014)
  • “A Visible Bridge: Contemporary Jewish Fiction and the Return to the Shoah,” in Victoria Aarons, ed., Third-Generation Holocaust Writing (Lexington Books, 2016)
  • “A Zionist Home: Jewish Youths and the Kibbutz Family after the Holocaust” in Joanna Michlic, Jewish Childhood in Poland, ed., (forthcoming)
  • “The Legend of the Ghetto Fighters: Jewish Youth and Resistance After the Holocaust,” in Simone Gigliotti and Monica Tempian, eds. The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime: Migration, the Holocaust, and Postwar Displacement (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015)
  • “To Build and Be Rebuilt: Jewish Youth and Zionism in Postwar Europe,” in Yossi Goldstein, ed., Between Religion, Nation, and Land: The Struggle Over Jewish Identity in the Modern Period (Hebrew) (Ariel University, 2014)
  • “Stateless Citizens of Israel: Jewish DPs and Zionism in Post-War Germany” in The Disentanglement of Populations: Migration, Expulsion and Displacement in Postwar Europe, 1944-9(Palgrave-MacMillan, 2011), Jessica Reinisch and Elizabeth White, eds.
  • “Living in Landsberg, Dreaming of Deganiah: Jewish Youth and Zionism after the Holocaust” in We Are Here: New Approaches to the Study of Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-War Germany, (Wayne State University Press, February 2010)
  • “Living in Landsberg, Dreaming of Deganiah: Jewish Youth and Zionism after the Holocaust” (in Hebrew), Bishvil Ha-Zikaron, Yad Vashem Educational Journal, December 2009
  • “Cultural Work in the Kibbutz: Zionist Function and Fantasy for Jewish DP Youth” in Beyond Camps and Forced Labour Conference Proceedings 2006 (Secolo Verlag, 2007)
  • “Jewish Diasporas: Jewish Identity in the Modern World,” AJS Perspectives, (Spring 2003)