Prof. Norman (Noam) Stillman is Schusterman/Josey Professor Emeritus of Judaic History at the University of Oklahoma and since 2016 has been Visiting Distinguished Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is an internationally recognized authority on the history and culture of the Islamic world and on Sephardi and Oriental Jewry. Professor Stillman received his B.A. (magnum cum laude) and Ph.D. in Oriental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is the author of seven books and numerous articles in several languages. His book The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times, a sequel to his highly acclaimed The Jews of Arab Lands: a History and Source Book (Jewish Publication Society, 1979 and 1991) was nominated for the National Jewish Book Award. Among his other books is Sephardi Religious Responses to Modernity (Harwood Academic Press, 1995) and The Language and Culture of the Jews of Sefrou (University of Manchester Press, 1987). He is the Executive Editor of the award-winning five-volume Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World with Brill Academic Publishers (Brill Academic Press, 2010) and continues in that capacity for the expanding online edition.
Professor Stillman was editor of the AJS Review, the journal of the Association for Jewish Studies from 1989-1999. He has traveled widely throughout the Middle East and North Africa and frequently lectures there, as well as in Europe and the United States. He has received numerous academic honors including: Phi Beta Kappa, the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the SUNY-Binghamton award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and he delivered the prestigious Momigliano Lectures for the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought and the Sherman Lectures for the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. During the academic year 1994/95, he was Lady Davis Fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and during the spring of 1995, he was also a visiting fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel-Aviv University. He was the recipient of Ohio State University Melton Center’s Distinguished Humanist award in the spring of 2000. He was Rothberg Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University in the spring of 2000 and again in the spring of 2010. During the academic year 2001/2002, he was Visiting Scholar in the Center for Maghrebi Berber and Arabic Studies at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris. During the Spring and Summer of 2011, he was the Allianz Visiting Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.
View Prof. Stillman's webinar discussion, "The Jews of the Islamic World in Modern Times: Transformation and Transplantation."