April 23, 2020

Laurence Roth, professor and co-chair of Susquehanna University’s Department of English and Creative Writing, has been named to the 2020-21 class of fellows in the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Roth is the Degenstein professor of English and the founder and director of the Jewish and Israel Studies program at Susquehanna.

During his in-residence fellowship at the Katz Center, Roth will pursue research on the fellowship’s theme of “America’s Jewish Questions.”

The 2020–21 theme was born in part as a result of an impulse to confront the assumptions that have governed perceptions of the American Jewish experience, including the idea that the history of Jews in the United States is unique, marked by success and progress in contrast to the narrative sweep of European Jewish history.

Roth earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and his master’s degree and doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles.