Andreas Gotzmann, Ph.D. (1995) in Jewish Studies, is Professor of Jewish Studies at Erfurt University and taught at Dartmouth College. He has published extensively on Early Modern and Modern Jewish History and Jewish historiography, including Eigenheit und Einheit: Modernisierungsdiskurse des deutschen Judentums der Emanzipationszeit (Brill, 2002).Christian Wiese, Ph.D. (1997), is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Erfurt University and taught in Montreal, at Dartmouth College, and in Dublin. He has published extensively on Modern Jewish History and Thought, including Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany (Brill, 2005).

The volume, composed by excellent scholars from different academic disciplines, is a comprehensive handbook devoted to the complex relationship between modern Judaism and historical thinking in Europe, the United States and Israel from the Enlightenment to the present. Apart from analyzing the emergence of a new scholarly historical paradigm during this period, the contributions interpret the interaction and the tensions between Jewish historiography and other disciplines such as literature, theology, sociology and philosophy, describe the way historical consciousness was popularized and used for ideological purposes and explore the impact of different - religious or secular - identities on the historical representation of the Jewish past. A final part envisions new theoretical and methodological concepts within the field, including cultural studies and gender studies.