PhD (University of Chicago)
Dr. Alexandra Zirkle served as the the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies 2018-2019 Post-Doctoral Associate. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2016, completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Leibniz Institute of European History (Mainz) in 2017, and was Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at the University of Notre Dame in 2018. Dr. Zirkle is currently completing her book manuscript, Biblical Hermeneutics and the Formations of Modern German Jewry, which traces how German Jews expertly wielded exegetical scholarship to defend their rights to civil emancipation and to formulate their identities as modern Jews and Germans. Her second book project is a history of nineteenth-century Jewish critiques of capitalism as articulated in religious texts including sermons, commentaries, and devotional literature. Dr. Zirkle has taught courses on subjects including modern Jewish thought, medieval and modern biblical exegesis, and Jewish-Christian relations at the University of Chicago, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, and the University of Notre Dame.