Welcoming incoming Hazel D. Cole Fellow Brendan Goldman (left) and Benaroya Fellow Smadar Ben-Natan (right)

The Stroum Center for Jewish Studies warmly welcomes incoming postdoctoral fellows Brendan Goldman and Smadar Ben-Natan, who will join the Stroum Center faculty from 2020-2022.

Brendan Goldman holds the Hazel D. Cole Fellowship in Jewish Studies, while Smadar Ben-Natan holds the Benaroya Postdoctoral Fellowship in Israel Studies.

Brendan Goldman comes to the Stroum Center from Princeton University, where he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Program in Judaic Studies, in addition to coordinating the Comparative Diplomatics Workshop and teaching at Northern State Prison in Newark, New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. in history from The Johns Hopkins University in 2018.

His first book, “Camps of the Uncircumcised: The Cairo Geniza and Jewish Life in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” is under contract with University of Pennsylvania Press and will be published in 2021. His second book project, tentatively titled “A Disciplinary Society: Medieval Prisons through Jewish Eyes, 1000-1300,” examines how documents found in the Cairo Geniza, a synagogue storehouse preserving more than 40,000 medieval writings, can illuminate the ways in which state violence shaped the lives of everyday people during the Middle Ages.

Smadar Ben-Natan is a longtime Israeli human rights lawyer who completed her Ph.D. in law at Tel-Aviv University in 2020. Before arriving at the University of Washington, she was a visiting scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ben-Natan specializes in law and society and international law, with a particular focus on the intersection of criminal justice, national security and human rights. Her doctoral dissertation, titled “Citizen-Enemies,” explores how military courts inside Israel and in the Palestinian Territories were used to construct and manage multiple political categories of citizens and enemies.

She holds a Master in International Human Rights Law, with distinction, from the University of Oxford (2011), and an LLB from Tel-Aviv University (1995). She has litigated high-profile cases in the Israeli Supreme Court, appeared on national media, and published op-eds and blog posts on various platforms.

Both postdoctoral fellows will be offering courses and public lectures in winter and spring of the 2020-2021 academic year. Keep posted for more information. Welcome, Brendan and Smadar!