Dr. Sam Shuman

I am currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology
at Davidson College in North Carolina. From 2021-2022, I held the Rabin-Shvidler Joint Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jewish Studies at Fordham University & Columbia University.

I received my PhD and MA in Sociocultural Anthropology and a Graduate Certificate in Judaic Studies from the University of Michigan. I also hold a BA in Sociocultural Anthropology from Columbia University and a BA in Jewish Women & Gender Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary. 

My dissertation, Cutting Out the Middleman: The Diamond Industry &
the Politics of Displacement in a European Port City, was awarded the
Michael S. Bernstein Dissertation Prize in Judaic Studies from the
University of Michigan. My research has been supported through generous grants from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and Fulbright.  

I am currently in the process of writing my first book, Of Mice and Hasidic Men: Populist Masculinity & the Revival of a 20th-Century Jewish Saint. My writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Jewish Quarterly Review, Shofar, Religions, Images and as chapters in How Transparency Works: Ethnographies of Global Value and Critical Jewish Studies Now: The Relational Politics of Memory.