Did Jewish philosophy ever make it to the table? The question has bedeviled the field. Not so much “who,” but “what” comes next in Jewish Philosophy and Thought after its students would seem to have nearly exhausted the 20th century German-Jewish philosophical canon, along with Moses Maimonides? And through which theoretical prisms? As a small field, it sometimes has felt that phenomenology, postmodernism, postcolonialism, aesthetics and visual theory, gender, and political theology barely scratched its surface.
The advisory board directing the new series, New Modern Jewish Philosophy and Thought, at Indiana University Press covers like crosshatch the gamut: modern Jewish thought and culture, American Judaism, kabbalah and medieval philosophy, gender, aesthetics and visual theory, phenomenology, science, continental philosophy. In alphabetical order, they are Claire E. Katz, Ken Koltun-Fromm, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Elliot R. Wolfson (University of California at Santa Barbara), and myself.
Only for technical reasons, the excellent backlist of Jewish philosophy and thought at Indiana University Press, which you can find here, cannot be included in the new series. Informally, however, the backlist is the background with which and upon which the new series builds. Authors and book-editors include Koltun-Fromm, Claire Katz, Shaul Magid, Mel Scult, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Shai Held, Martin Kavka and Randi Rashkover, Noam Pianko, Aaron Hughes, Elliot Wolfson, Michael Morgan, Hilary Putnam, Robert Erlewine, and Berl Lang.
Indiana University Press is an established powerhouse in the publishing of academic Jewish Studies. Indeed, it would seem that New Jewish Philosophy and Thought represents nothing new at Indiana University Press, or rather nothing more than a new beginning. As series director, I am delighted to invite interested junior and senior colleagues alike to contact us to pitch project proposals. Especially welcome are those proposals that push disciplinary boundaries.
