Bruce Rosenstock

Director of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Professor

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Contact Information


Research Interest(s)

Biblical theology, political theology, and modern Jewish philosophy

Research Description

  • God Accused: Theodicy and the Problem of Unredeemable Suffering is a book-length study of the history of theodicy, from the Book of Job until Philip K. Dick's science fiction trilogy, Valis. The Book of Job's complaint against God's justice gets its response in Leibniz's Theodicy, but Immanuel Kant argues that the only evidence of justice in the world is the refusal of Job to accept his suffering as just. With Philip K. Dick, the inability of God to bring justice to the world becomes the drama of God's own suffering in the world.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Classics, Princeton University, 1979
  • B.A. Columbia University

Distinctions / Awards

  • Co-PI, “A Multimedia Digital Library of Hispanic Folk Literature,” National Science Foundation Digital Library Initiative II, $500,000, 1998-2002

Courses

  • Fall 2012
  • RLST 108: Religion and Society in the West, part 1

Selected Publications

Books

  • Philosophy and the Jewish Question: Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Beyond. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.
  • New Men: Conversos, Christian Theology, and Society in Fifteenth-Century Spain. Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar 39; London: Department of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College. 2002.

Book Contributions


  • "Derrida Polytropos: Philosophy as Nostos." Derrida and Antiquity . Ed. M. Leonard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Journal Articles

  • "Melville’s Transcendentalists: Kant and Radical Evil in Pierre." Leviathan12.3 (2010): 21-36.
  • "Incest, Nakedness, and Holiness: Biblical Israel at the Limits of Culture." Jewish Studies Quarterly16.4 (2009): 333-62.