Glenn Davis Dynner (born April 11, 1969) is an American author and historian specializing in religion and history of East European Jewry.[1] He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies and a Professor and Chair of Religion at Sarah Lawrence College (Chair of Humanities, 2014-16).
Glenn Dynner | |
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Born | Maryland, United States | April 11, 1969
Occupation(s) | Historian, Academic, Author |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Doctoral advisor | Antony Polonsky |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Jewish History and Religion |
Sub-discipline | Social History of Hasidism and the Haskala; Holocaust |
Institutions | Sarah Lawrence College |
Website | http://gdynner.com |
Dynner received his B.A. in Comparative History from Brandeis University in 1993, his M.A. in Jewish Studies from McGill University in 1997, and his Ph.D. in Near Eastern & Judaic Studies from Brandeis University in 2002 (supervised by Antony Polonsky). He works primarily in Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew sources on the Jewish social and religious history in Poland, and specializes in the Hasidic movement.
In 2011, Dynner appeared on NBC's Who Do You Think You Are? with actress Gwyneth Paltrow.[2] Throughout the episode, Dynner helps Gwyneth Paltrow uncover her ancestral Jewish past. On the same show and its spin-offs, he also consulted on the Rashida Jones and Bernie Sanders episodes.
Dynner teaches numerous upper-level seminars at Sarah Lawrence covering the history of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. In the past, his classes included: The Holocaust, Jews and Violence: From the Bible to the Present, and First-Year Studies: Jewish Spirituality and Culture.[15]
Dynner's father Alan Roy Dynner is the former VP of Eaton Vance.