Professor Carsten Schapkow is a specialist in German-Jewish History, Modern Jewish Historiography, and Sephardic History.
Schapkow is the author of the monographs The Freedom to Philosophize: Jewish Identity as Mirrored in the Reception of Baruch de Spinoza in German Literature (in German Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2001) and Role Model and Counter Model: The Golden Age of Iberian Jewry and German-Jewish Culture during the Era of Emancipation (in German Cologne: Böhlau 2011; in English Lexington Books: 2016) initial research for which was supported by a grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation from 2003 to 2005.
He is the co-editor of Conversion in Spaces of Jewish History (Wiesbaden: Reichert 2014), the co-editor of Darkhei Noam. The Jews of Arab Lands: A Festschrift for Norman (Noam) A. Stillman (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015), and the co-editor of Jewish Studies and Israel Studies in the 21st Century: Intersections and Prospects (Lanham: Lexington Studies 2019).
He is currently co-editing two volumes with Professor Frank Jacob on Nationalism and Populism: Expressions of Fear or Political Strategies? and Nationalism in a Transnational Age which will be both published in 2021 with de Gruyter.
Since 2017 Schapkow serves as the series editor for Lexington Studies in Modern Jewish History, Historiography, and Memory.
Schapkow is a faculty member in the Department of History and the Schusterman Center for Judaic and Israel Studies. He also serves as the director of the Center for the Study of Nationalism in the College of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
His classes at OU include Transformation of the Jews, Rebirth of Israel, Jews and Other Germans, Jews and Nationalism in Eastern Europe, From Bismarck to Hitler; The Holocaust, Diasporas and Minorities in Europe (Colloquium and Graduate Seminar), Nations and Nation-States in Europe (Capstone).
Schapkow received his PhD in 2000 from the Free University Berlin. Before coming to OU Schapkow was a Research Fellow at the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at Leipzig University from 2000 to 2005. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Trier, and the University of Graz.
Since 2012 he is associated faculty member at the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies, Berlin-Brandenburg. In AY 2020-21 he teaches at the University of Potsdam and is co-organizing with Professor Sina Rauschenbach the Sephardic Year at the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg.
