Maria Rethelyi
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Associate Professor of Religious Studies Section Head of Religious Studies Director of Jewish Studies Jointly Appointed in the Department of History Affiliate Faculty in Comparative Literature Affiliate Faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 112 Coates Hall |
Professor Rethelyi's research interests encompass modern Hungarian Jewish history and literature, Jewish mysticism, Jewish race theories, gender studies, the history of nationalism, and Orientalism. She has taught courses on Jewish cultural history, gender and religion, and the history and theory of religions. Additionally, she has authored several articles on the subject of race, gender and identity in modern Jewish thought and culture. Her articles have been published in journals such as Women in Judaism, Hungarian Studies, East European Jewish Studies, and The Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. Her work has contributed to the understanding of Jewish identity in the modern era..
M.A. in Religion Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago (2000)
Ph.D. in Jewish Studies, University of Chicago (2008)
REL 1000: Religions of the World
REL 2000: Introduction to the Study of Religion
REL 2029: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
REL 2120: The Holocaust
REL 3010: Abortion and Religion
REL 3010: Jews and Hollywood
REL 3010: Religions of Modern Israel
REL 3100: Judaism
REL 3300: Women and Religion
REL 4014: Modern Jewish Thought
REL 4032: Religion, Gender, and Society
REL 4301: Theories of Religion
HNRS 2020: Jewish Culture
HNRS 2021: Jews and Race in Film
Recipient of ORED International Conference Travel Support (2023)
Recipient of Faculty Development Grant, Israel Institute (2023)
Recipient of Travel Grant, Association of Jewish Studies (2022)
Recipient of Steven Béla Várdy Legacy Scholarship, AHEA (2020)
Recipient of Manship Summer Research Grant (2018)
Recipient of American Association of University Women grant (2017)
Recipient of Council of Research Summer Stipend (2016)
Recipient of Social Sciences and the Humanities Research Council of Canada, Insight Grant (2014-15)
Recipient of American Council of Learned Societies, Travel Grant (2010)
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Chapters
“Antisemitism in Hungarian Literature from 1800 to 1918,” in The Cambridge History of Antisemitism, Volume 2 (forthcoming, 2025)
“Jewish Mysticism as a Form of Feminism in Early 20th Century Hungarian Jewish Literature: Anna Lesznai’s Response to Otto Weininger,” Women in Judaism 19.2 (2024)
“'Isolated brotherless branch of his race':: Jewish Images of Kinship with Hungarians at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” East European Jewish Studies (forthcoming, 2024)
“The Khazar Ancestry of Hungarian Jews,” Nineteenth Century Studies 34 (2022): 95-115
“The Jewish Mockery of Suicide: Counter-Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Hungarian Jewish Literature," Journal of Jewish Identities 15/2 (2022): 181-200
“The Birth Metaphor in Anna Lesznai’s Difference Feminism,” Women in Judaism 18/1 (2021)
“Hungarian Jewish Stories of Origin: Samuel Kohn, the Khazar Connection and the Conquest of the Land,” Hungarian Cultural Studies 14 (2021): 52-64
“The Context and Subtext of Goldziher's Memorial Lecture on Vambery,” Hungarian Studies 34/2 (2021): 259-81
“The Wanderer's Gaze: The City in Modern Hungarian Jewish Literature,” Studies in Jewish Culture and History 21/2 (2020): 131-55
"Rabbinic Understandings of Marital Rape in the Talmud," in Rape Culture, Gender Violence, and Religion, ed. Carolyn Blyth, Emily Colgan, and Katie B. Edwards (Palgrave McMillan Press, 2018), 195-212
“A Place of Pretense and Escapism: The Coffeehouse in Early 20th Century Budapest Jewish Literature,” Religions 9/10 (2018)
“Good Writers, Bad Jews: The “Jewish Question” among Hungarian Jewish Intellectuals of the Interwar Period,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 17/2 (2018): 222-35
“Hungarian Nationalism and the Origins of Neolog Judaism,” Nova Religio 18/2 (2014):67-82
“The Racial Option in Modern Jewish Thought: The Case of Hungarian Jews,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 12/1 (2013): 17-34
“Képzelt rokonok?: ahogy egy zsidó kisebbség látta a magyarságot a múlt század végén (Imagined affinities? A minority’s view of the majority in Hungary at the turn of the century),” Journal of History (University of Pécs, Hungary, 2011): 51-61
“Guttmann’s Critique of Strauss’s Modernist Approach to Medieval Philosophy: Some Arguments Toward a Counter-Critique,” Journal of Textual Reasoning 3/1 (2004)
Book Reviews
Review of André Mozes, ed., New Philosemitism Paradigm (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2023) in Hungarian Cultural Studies (forthcoming, Fall 2024)
Review of Anikó Boros, Die Ermordung ungarischer Juden 1944 in Pusztavám. Zeugenschaft und Erinnerung im transnationalen Kontext (Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2020), in Central European History 55/2 (2022):324-26
Review of Peter Longerich “Holocaust”: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (Oxford University Press, 2009), in Human Rights Review 13 (2012): 417-19
Review of Jurgen Matthaeus, ed., Approaching a Holocaust Survivor: Holocaust Testimony and its Transformations (Oxford University Press, 2009), in Human Rights Review 12 (2011): 257-58