Author Interviews

Below are recent interviews with CUP authors. View a complete listing of past interviews.

Read an interview with Sophie Richardson.

Cloth, $50.00 / £34.50 344 pages , December 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-14386-8

Read an interview with the editors of Soul & Form, Jack Sanders and Kate Terezakis.

Paper, $27.50 / £19.00 264 pages
ISBN: 978-0-231-14981-5

Cloth, $84.50 / £58.50 264 pages , January 2010
ISBN: 978-0-231-14980-8

Read an interview with Jane I. Smith on Religion in American History.

Paper, $24.50 / £17.00 256 pages
ISBN: 978-0-231-14711-8

Cloth, $79.50 / £55.00 256 pages , November 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-14710-1

Read an interview with Dorothy N. Gamble and Marie Weil.

Paper, $45.00 / £31.00 496 pages
ISBN: 978-0-231-11003-7

Cloth, $125.00 / £86.50 496 pages , November 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-11002-0

Read an interview with Hans-Georg Moeller on Religion Dispatches (December 10, 2009)

Paper, $24.50 / £17.00 224 pages
ISBN: 978-0-231-14509-1

Cloth, $79.50 / £55.00 224 pages , June 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-14508-4

How do you define Jewish mysticism and Jewish philosophy? What’s the relationship between them?

Both Jewish mysticism and Jewish philosophy are complex and multifaceted phenomena that cannot be easily defined. In general terms, however, we could demarcate mysticism as an intensified path (encompassing both ritual and knowledge) that facilitates the individual’s communion with or direct experience of what is considered in a particular cultural context to be ultimate reality, whereas philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge and truth about the world and the human through the mediated exercise of reason and logical argument (even irrationality is examined philosophically through the prism of the rational).

Moses of Burgos, a kabbalist active in the second half of the 13th century, famously said that the kabbalists stand on the head of the philosophers. This statement underscores the intricate relationship between the two worldviews, marking the point of their convergence and divergence. In my own scholarly practice, I have elicited mystical elements from philosophical works and philosophical insights from mystical sources.

This is an excerpt from an interview with Elliott Wolfson that was published on Mixed Multitudes. To read the full interview.

Cloth, $35.00 / £24.00 472 pages , December 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-14630-2

Mark Taylor: The issues about which I teach and write are often very abstract but are significant because of the ways in which they illuminate specific experiences we all undergo. I knew that this kind of writing would be different from anything I had done before and realized that the only possible research is life itself.

Read the rest of the interview with Mark Taylor.

Cloth, $26.95 / £17.95 288 pages , October 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-14780-4

Joyce Mendelsohn: Aggressive development has changed the character and streetscape of the Lower East Side since the first edition of this book was published eight years ago. In the new edition I examine the dynamics of the neighborhood reinventing itself. As a culture of youth and affluence emerges, it is becoming a place of stark contrasts between locals and newcomers.

Read the full interview with Joyce Mendelsohn.

Paper, $18.95 / £13.00 328 pages
ISBN: 978-0-231-14761-3

Cloth, $65.00 / £45.00 328 pages , September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-14760-6

Beverly Black: Between 9 and 30 percent of high school students have been victims of teen dating violence and sexual assault.... A recent survey, commissioned by Liz Claiborne Inc. and the Family Violence Prevention Fund, found that 67 percent of teens whose families have experienced economic problems in the past year have experienced abuse in their own relationships.

Read the full interview with the authors.

Paper, $35.00 / £24.00 336 pages
ISBN: 978-0-231-13453-8

Cloth, $89.50 / £62.00 336 pages , May 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-13452-1

Q: What is the Aid Trap?

R. Glenn Hubbard: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The vast majority of aid is well intentioned, but it works against the prosperity of poor countries. Conventional aid sounds worthy, but it’s a trap; it crowds out, suppresses, or corrupts the local business sector, which is the source of mass prosperity everywhere in the world.

Read the full interview with R. Glenn Hubbard.

Cloth, $22.95 / £15.95 212 pages , September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-14562-6

Seth Kunin: Crypto-Judaism presents us with a unique form of Judaism, different from any other form found in the world. It thus provides a new view of what Judaism can be and what it can mean....

Read the full interview.

Cloth, $50.00 / £34.50 288 pages , June 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-14218-2

Q: Why do you call the book “A Tragedy of Democracy”?

GR: It is my way of reminding people what is important about the wartime treatment of Japanese in North America. What these people went through is not in a class with the great crimes of the war years. There were no real atrocities: no mass murders, no deliberate torture, and some provision for schools and health care. Rather, what is most troubling about their confinement is the failure of democracy under pressure....

Read the full interview.

Cloth, $29.95 / £19.95 408 pages , July 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-12922-0

Dana Eric Kaplan.: I argue that American Jews, like other Americans, have become much more interested in personal spirituality, and this has transformed American Judaism....

Read the full interview.

You can also read Dana Kaplan's interview with Paul Harvey at Religion in American History.

Cloth, $34.50 / £24.00 446 pages , July 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-13728-7

Q: What’s wrong with morality?

Hans-Georg Moeller: People usually assume that morality is a good thing. It is generally believed that a moral person is somehow better than a person who is not moral and that a society which holds moral values in high esteem is better of than one which does not. I do not think that this is the case—and this is what the whole book is about. It is about pointing out the “sick” aspects of morality, about the “pathology of morality,” so to speak. I think that morality does not deserve to be valued as much as it is today.

Read the complete interview.

Paper, $24.50 / £17.00 224 pages
ISBN: 978-0-231-14509-1

Cloth, $79.50 / £55.00 224 pages , June 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-14508-4