Jeffrey Shoulson
Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English
PhD, Yale University
Jeffrey S. Shoulson serves as Dean of Arts and Sciences, with a faculty appointment in the Department of English.
Prior to coming to Brandeis, Shoulson served as Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at the University of Connecticut. Before moving into the Office of the Provost, Shoulson was UConn’s Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life and held the Doris and Simon Konover Chair in Jewish Studies. He was Professor of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages and Professor of English, and had affiliations with the Medieval Studies Program and the Middle East Studies Program. He was previously on the faculty at the University of Miami, where he also served as Director of Judaic Studies.
An internationally-recognized, award-winning scholar of early modern literature and culture, Shoulson’s research focuses on intellectual, cultural, and literary encounters between Jews and Christians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Along with numerous articles and book chapters, his books include Milton and the Rabbis: Hellenism, Hebraism, and Christianity (Columbia UP, 2001); Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (U Penn P, 2004); and Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England (U Penn P, 2013). He is the recipient of grants and awards from the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (UPenn), and the American Academy of Jewish Research.
Shoulson served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies (2020-21) and on the executive committee of the Milton Society of America (2002-06, 2013-15). He is currently Religion Editor of “Routledge Resources Online—The Renaissance World.” He holds an AB in English Literature from Princeton University, an MPhil in Renaissance Studies from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in English Literature from Yale University.