His research interests include German-Jewish Thought; political theology; critical theory; Christian-Jewish relationships; and animals in literature. His book The Infrahuman: Animality in Modern Jewish Literature (2018) examines how modern Jewish writers from Heinrich Heine to Franz Kafka used images of animals, especially dogs and other creatures, to explore the gap between how Jews were portrayed by outsiders and how they actually experienced their own lives. The Infrahuman describes how Jews were imagined as animal-like not because of biology or race, but as a way of marking their exclusion from full citizenship and political life, while also making their suffering represent a universal condition of vulnerability under power.
Professor Pines’ forthcoming book, The Specter of Prehistory: Jews and Christian Melancholia, explores how Christian culture imagined Jews from the past and what shaped Christian ideas about political power, historical memory, and sovereignty from the Middle Ages through early modern Europe.
Did you know you can take Professor Pines’ class for free?
- Adults ages 60+ can audit Professor Pines’ Spring semester class, The American Jewish Experience, for free as part of UB’s Lifelong Learning program. The class meets Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 1:00-1:50pm in 708 Clemens Hall. Email Professor Pines at [email protected] to take advantage of this opportunity.
- The American Jewish Experience Course Description:
- This course explores the rich and complex history of American Jewish experience from the seventeenth century to the present, examining how Jewish immigrants fleeing European persecution built the largest Jewish community in modern history and profoundly shaped American culture, politics, and society. Through engagement with diverse cultural productions—including fiction, music, film, television, and comics—we will investigate how life in a liberal democracy and capitalist economy transformed Jewish identity, and how Jews, in turn, left an indelible mark on American life. Special attention will be paid to the ways Jewishness intersects with and complicates other dimensions of identity such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and class, revealing the multifaceted nature of what it means to be both Jewish and American across centuries of dynamic cultural exchange.
