Jarrod Tanny is a Canadian American professor of history and Charles and Hannah Block Distinguished Scholar in Jewish History at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.[1] After completing his education through a master's degree in Canada, he came to the United States (US) for a PhD in history at the University of California at Berkeley. He has made his academic career in the US.
Tanny, then a professor of history at Ohio University, was hired in 2010 as the inaugural Block Scholar, a professorship named in honour of the parents of former State Senator Frank Block (American politician).[3] His scholarly interests include Jewish humour and Russian Jewish history.[4][2]
Tanny's 2011 book, City of Rogues and Schnorrers, explores Jewish life in 19th-century Odesa, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), a free port and boomtown with a reputation for attracting "gangsters and swindlers..." along with ambitious men and women, some of whom attained great wealth.[5][6]
The Slavic and East European Journal, described City of Rogues and Schnorrers as, "serious and funny, informative and amusing, witty and well written."[7] Reviewer Anna Shternshis cited Tanny's unusual ability to draw on both Russian and Yiddish sources, which she considers to be an important contribution in a field where scholarship has often been confined to a single language.[8]
Publications
City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia's Jews and the Myth of Old Odesa. (Indiana University Press, 2011)[6][8][9]
"I Survived Teaching Jewish Studies in North Carolina" (Forward, March 22, 2015).[1] Also published under the pseudonym Yid In Dixieland as "Bible Belt Blues: Tales of a Professional Canadian Jew in the American Deep South" (Shtetl Montreal, 2011).[10]
How To Boycott Israel For Dummies - New Campus Apartheid Edition. (Self-published)[11]
