Flora Cassen, PhD
New Book Coming Soon in March 2026!!
A poignant blend of memoir and history, Stained Glass explores Jewish identity in post-Holocaust Europe, confronting the persistence of antisemitism across generations and continents.
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In Stained Glass, Flora Cassen traces a Jewish life shaped by family and history, moving between medieval Europe and the present to connect lived experience with the longer arc of Jewish history.
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Drawing on her upbringing in Antwerp’s Jewish community and her grandparents’ escape from Nazi-occupied Europe to the Belgian Congo, Cassen writes from within a past in which powerlessness rubbed shoulders with power. From her later life in the United States, she considers Jewish life in Europe as a mirror that reflects enduring questions about vulnerability and belonging.
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Stained Glass asks what it means to leave Europe behind and to encounter in American Jewish life a vitality that is strikingly beautiful yet never fully settled.
About
Flora Cassen is the Lavine Family Director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies and Director of the Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness at Brandeis University. Her academic research explores the lives of Jews in Renaissance Italy, particularly focusing on discriminatory practices and the construction of cultural identities. More recently, Flora has expanded her scholarship to contemporary analyses of antisemitism. Passionate about education and historical analysis, she actively engages broader audiences through public-facing writing, teaching, and speaking, contributing to ongoing discussions about history, culture, and society.
Education
2008
Ph.D in Hebrew and Judaic Studies,
New York University​
2001
M.A. in Comparative History,
Brandeis University
1999
B.A. in History and Law,
Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
with Grande Distinction
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Experience
2026 - Present
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2024 – 2025
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2020 – 2023
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2019 – 2025
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2017 – 2019
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2011 – 2017
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2010
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2007 – 2010
Lavine family Director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies and Director of the Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness at Brandeis University
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Senior Faculty, Shalom Hartmann Institute
Chair, Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies, WashU
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Associate Professor of History
Associate Professor of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies
Washington University in St. Louis
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Associate Professor of History, UNC
Van der Horst Fellow in Jewish History and Culture
Assistant Professor of History
Van der Horst Fellow in Jewish History and Culture
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Fellow, Italian Academy, Columbia University
Assistant Professor of History
University of Vermont
Books
Marking the Jews in Renaissance Italy
Politics, Religion, and Power of Symbols
Cambridge University Press, 2017
contributed to:
The Lombard Haggadah
Text by Milvia Bollati, Flora Cassen and Marc Michael Epstein, Christopher de Hamel
Les Enluminures, 2019
Stained Glass forthcoming in March '26!!
Scholarly Publications
The Origins of Ashkenazi Jews: Can Genetics Help Resolve an Enduring Historical Mystery? Jewish Quarterly Review, 115.2 (summer 2025 issue)
​​​​Joseph Ha-Kohen's Sefer Ha-India Ha-hadasha: a Sixteenth-Century Hebrew Translation of Gómara’s Historia General and its Reinterpretation of Spanish Imperialism, Colonial Latin American Review (February 2025)
Jewish Refugees in the Belgian Congo: An Ambivalent Privilege?” Patterns of Prejudice, 57:4-5 (September 2024)
Echoes of the Past: Understanding Today’s Antisemitism Through a Medieval Lens,” Responses to October 7: Antisemitic Discourse, David Hirsh and Rosa Freedman eds. (Routledge, May 2024)
The Sausage in the Jews’ Pantry: Food and Jewish-Christian Relations in Renaissance Italy,” Global Jewish Foodways: A History, Hasia Diner and Simone Cinotto eds., University Press of Nebraska (June 2018)
Philip II of Spain and His Italian Jewish Spy,” Journal of Early Modern History, 21:4 (September 2017)
The Last Spanish Expulsion in Europe: Milan 1565-1597,” Association for Jewish Studies Review, 38:1 (May 2014)
Articles
public scholarship, essays and op-eds
The Place of Jewish Studies in an Era of Protests Sources (March 27, 2025)
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Beyond Columbus: What DNA can—and can’t—tell us about Jewish History, JQR Blog (April 10, 2025)
Should Academic Institutions Boycott Israel? The Guardian (June 1, 2024)
Not Antisemites, nor Antizionists: A more Precise Term for Protesters Who want Israel Gone, Haaretz; republished in St. Louis Jewish Light (May 10, 2024)
Hidden in Translation—Jewish Resistance to the Spanish Empire,” Psyche/Aeon (March 21, 2023)
Nazi Orders for Jews to wear a star were hateful, but far from unique—a historian traces the long history of antisemitic,” The Conversation; Smithsonian Magazine; St. Louis Jewish Light; Times of Israel; Religion News Service; The Raw Story (March 14, 2023)
My Great-Uncle, the Kapo. What Charles did during the War,” Slate (November 29, 2022)
Killing a Dog is Worse than Murdering a Jew: The Antisemitic Injustice of France’s Sarah Halimi Trial,” Haaretz (April 26, 2021)
Jews Control the Chinese Labs That Created Coronavirus: White Supremacists’ Dangerous New Conspiracy Theory,” Haaretz (May 3, 2020)
Is Antwerp Ready to Reckon with Its Role in the Holocaust?” The Forward (September 29, 2019)
De Mythe die de joden al eeuwen achtervolgt,” De Standaard (March 26, 2019)
Stop Whining about Your Holocaust Already: What Happens when Europe’s Jews Call Out Antisemitism, Haaretz (March 15, 2019)
Jews Don’t Get Our Humor: How a Belgian Town is Doubling Down on Its Antisemitism, Haaretz (October 28, 2019)