I am a Senior Lecturer in Tel Aviv University's dynamic Department of Jewish History where I also serve as Head of TAU's Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism (http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism).

Grounded at the intersection of social, political and cultural histories, my research explores various aspects of Jewish and east European societies and cultures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  I am particularly interested in questions that probe the very nature of urban society as well as those regarding the various connections between the process of urbanization, the construction of modern communities and the nature of inter-group conflict.

After receiving my BA from the University of California at Berkeley in History, I undertook graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where I wrote my PhD dissertation under the joint supervision of Prof. Ezra Mendelsohn and Prof. Jonathan Frankel, of blessed memory. While in Jerusalem, I also worked closely with Prof. Israel Bartal and Prof. Shaul Stampfer.  In addition to my studies in Jerusalem and Berkeley, I have also had the pleasure of being a visiting student or scholar at the Simon Dubnow Institute, Leipzig, University College, London, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Toronto, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Warsaw University and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

Published in 2012, my monograph Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry (http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=17360) examines the impact of the urban environment on the development of modern Jewish society and politics in what was then Europe's largest Jewish center, Warsaw.  Throughout Barricades and Banners, I also analyze the influence of urban society, democratic institutions and popular politics on the nature and course of relations between Poles and Jews in turn of the century Warsaw.

I am also co-editor of volume 24 of the annual Polin on Jews and Their Neighbours in Eastern Europe since 1750,  (http://www.littman.co.uk/cat/polin-24.html), and of a special edition of the European Review of History on Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cerh20/17/3).

Sponsored, in part, by a generous grant from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), my current research project integrates scholarship and methodologies from urban studies, Jewish studies and hate studies to look at the different ways that various urban spaces influenced and shaped relations between residents of large cities across turn of the century eastern Europe.  

In addition to this research project on the various connections between urban spaces and inter-group relations, I am also co-convener of the newly formed International Consortium for Research on Antisemitism and Racism (ICRAR). Founded  in London in 2011, ICRAR is a dynamic group of scholars from Europe, Israel and North America who are committed to pooling their intellectual and institutional resources to re-invigorating the study of antisemitism and its relationship to other racisms (ICRAR_web_version1).  

I am always happy to hear comments and thoughts regarding the different publications, research projects and courses listed on this website.

Monograph

1)    Barricades and Banners:  The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry (Stanford University Press, 2012). http://www.amazon.com/Barricades-Banners-Revolution-Transformation-Stanford/dp/0804763836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352057311&sr=8-1&keywords=ury%2C+scott

Edited Works

2)  Jews and Their Neighbors in Eastern Europe, 1750-Present, Israel Bartal, Antony Polonsky and Scott Ury, editors, Polin 24 (2011). http://www.amazon.com/Polin-Studies-Polish-Neighbours-Eastern/dp/1904113923/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352057342&sr=1-1&keywords=polin+24

3)    Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe, Michael L. Miller and Scott Ury, guest editors, European Review of History, vol. 17, no. 3 (2010).  http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cerh20/17/3

4) Artur Sandauer, On Polish Writers of Jewish Descent in the Twentieth Century, trans. Abe Shenitzer, edited by Scott Ury, Studies in Polish Jewry, Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2005.

5)  Ela Bauer, Between Poles and Jews: The Development of Nahum Sokolow’s Political Thought, edited by Scott Ury, Studies in Polish Jewry, Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2005.  http://www.magnespress.co.il/website_en/index.asp?id=2587

Refereed Articles and Book Chapters:

6) "Warsaw," Oxford Bibliographies Online: Jewish Studies, ed. David Biale (under review).

7) "In Kotik's Corner: Urban Culture, Bourgeois Politics and the Struggle for Jewish Civility in Turn of the Century Eastern Europe," (under review).

8) “The Jews of Poland, 1800-2000,” in Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. Mitchell Hart and Tony Michels (forthcoming).

9)  Scott Ury and Theodore Weeks, “O Brother, Where Art Thou? The Search for Inter-Ethnic Solidarity in the Late Imperial Era,” Gal-Ed, 23 (2012): 97-130. Ury and Weeks

10) “Young Jews, Big Cities:  Youth, Masculinity and Nationalism in Turn of the Century Eastern Europe,” Z’manim (in Hebrew, forthcoming).

11)  Michael L. Miller and Scott Ury, “Dangerous Liaisons? Jews and Cosmopolitanism in Modern Europe,” Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, ed. Gerard Delanty (Routledge, 2011).  http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415600811/

12)  “Jonathan Frankel: In Memoriam,” Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 100, no. 4 (2010): 689-697. UryonFrankel

13)  “Auto-Emancipation by Leon Pinsker,” Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture, ed. Dan Diner (in German, forthcoming, 2012).

14)  Israel Bartal and Scott Ury, “Between Jews and Their Neighbors: Isolation, Confrontation and Influence in Eastern Europe,” in Jews and Their Neighbours in Eastern Europe, Polin 24 (2011): 3-30. http://www.littman.co.uk/cat/polin-24.html

15) Michael L. Miller and Scott Ury, “Cosmopolitanism: The End of Jewishness?” In Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe, European Review of History, vol. 17, no. 3 (2010). http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13507486.2010.481923

16) “Urban Societies, Popular Culture, Participatory Politics: On the Culture of Modern Jewish Politics,” in Insiders and Outsiders:  Dilemmas of East European Jewry: Studies in Honor of Ezra Mendelsohn, ed. Richard I. Cohen, Jonathan Frankel and Stefani Hoffman (Littman, 2010).  http://www.littman.co.uk/cat/cohen-insiders.html

17)  “‛Juste un café?’ Le rôle des cafés juifs à Varsovie au tournant du XXe siècle,” Les Cahiers du Judaïsme, no. 26 (2009). http://www.lyber-eclat.net/lyber/cdj/cdj26.html

18) “The Revolution of 1905 and the Politics of Despair:  Alienation, Friendship, Community,” in The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews:  Studies in Honor of Jonathan Frankel, ed. Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 96-110.  http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14447.html

19) “Zionism and Zionist Parties in Eastern Europe,” Jews in Eastern Europe: The YIVO Encyclopedia, ed. Gershon David Hundert (Yale Univ. Press, 2008)  www.yivoinstitute.org/publications

20)  “‘On the Gallows!’  The ‘Politics of Assimilation’ in Turn of the Century Warsaw,” Polin 20 (2008); 339-354; Polish version: Duchowość żydowska w Polsce (Kraków, 2001): 327-342. ScottUryAssimilationinPolish

21) “Noble Advocate or Unbridled Opportunist? The Shtadlan of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” Polin 15 (2002):  267-299. ScottUry_Shtadlan

22)  “Who, What, When, Where, and Why is Polish Jewry? Envisioning, Constructing and Possessing Polish Jewry,” Jewish Social Studies, vol. 6, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 205-228.  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jewish_social_studies/v006/6.3ury.html or ScottUry_PolishJewry

Fall Semester, 2012

Jews and Cities: Between Urban History and Communal History, Undergraduate Seminar, Tues., 14:00-18:00

Antisemitism and Racism: Researching Hate in the Twenty-First Century, Research Seminar, Sun., 18:00-20:00

Spring Semester, 2013

The Promised Land? Jewish History and Culture in North America, 1654-2010, Undergraduate Course, Sun. and Tues., 14:00-16:00

East European Jewry, 1600-1939, Undergraduate Course, Tues., 16:00-18:00

Antisemitism and Racism: Researching Hate in the Twenty-First Century, Research Seminar, Sun., 18:00-20:00

Past Courses Include:

 Graduate Seminars

The Historian's Craft:  What Makes History Jewish?

What is Antisemitism?

Jews and Cosmopolitanism: Dangerous Liaisons?

Visions and Revisions: Jewish History, Jewish Historians and Eastern Europe

In Search of Polish Jewry

Undergraduate Courses

From Shtadlanut to Statehood? Modern Jewish Politics

With Eyes on Zion?  Zionism and Nationalism in Eastern and Central Europe

Zionism and/as Modernity

Frozen in Time?  East European Jewry Beyond Myth and Martyrdom