Jonathan Zisook is a sociologist of religion and a scholar of the Holocaust and its aftermath in East Central Europe. Jonathan is the co-editor of From Centre to Periphery and Beyond: The History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites (2024) and the Modern Judaism editor of Religious Studies Review. He is currently completing a monograph on the politics of Holocaust memory in contemporary Poland and co-authoring a work on Holocaust museums and Jewish identity in the United States.
Jonathan’s research has been supported by the Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission, the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He received a PhD in Sociology from the City University of New York and an MA in Modern Jewish History from Yeshiva University.
Courses Taught at Pitt
- SOC 0339 / RELGST 0710 / JS 0710 - Sociology of Religion
Education & Training
- PhD, Sociology - City University of New York
- MA, Modern Jewish History - Yeshiva University
Representative Publications
From Centre to Periphery and Beyond: The History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites (Berlin, Germany: Metropol Verlag, 2024)
The Politics of Holocaust Memory in Central and Eastern Europe: Contemporary Poland as a Comparative Case Study,” in Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. 33, Becoming Post-Communist: Jews and the New Political Cultures of Russia and Eastern Europe, ed. Eli Lederhendler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 24-46
“Dead Jews Are Not A Metaphor,” Sociological Forum 37, no. 4 (2022): 1203-1206