Sam Finkelman

Mellon Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies

Samuel Finkelman is a historian specializing in Soviet and modern Jewish history, with research interests in nationalism, the Holocaust and its memory, and the history of dissent. His current book project—Ghetto, Gulag, Geulah—explores Soviet Jewish activists’ encounters with Russian and Ukrainian nationalists, illuminating how interethnic exchange precipitated and shaped Jewish collective memory of the catastrophic recent past in the post-Stalin USSR (1953-1985).

Samuel’s work has been supported by numerous grants including from the American Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) in Budapest, and the U.S. Department of Education FLAS program.