Dr. Justin Cammy is professor and chair of the programs in Jewish Studies and World Literatures at Smith College. A specialist in Yiddish literature and eastern European cultural history, he also teaches courses on Hebrew literature and Israeli history. Cammy's publications range from essays on Yiddish writers to scholarly translations of foundational texts to introductions to new editions of works by Yiddish poets and memoirists that open them up to a broad readership. His scholarship on the generation of “when Yiddish was young” challenges post-war myths about Yiddish. Cammy’s recent critical edition and translation of Abraham Sutzkever’s From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony was awarded the 2022 Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies from the Modern Language Association, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Yiddish, and the Finestone Prize for the best translation of a book on a Jewish theme from the J.I. Segal Awards. Cammy holds a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard and a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from McGill, which included a junior year at the Rothberg International School at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For almost twenty years, he also has been a faculty member at both the Steiner summer program at the Yiddish Book Center and the Naomi Prawer Kadar International Yiddish summer program at Tel Aviv University.
