Jeremy Dauber

Jeremy Dauber is an American academic and author, a professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Columbia University and one of the leading scholars of Jewish humor and American Jewish literary history. He received his degrees from Harvard University and Oxford University. Dauber's books include Antonio's Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (2004), Jewish Comedy: A Serious History (2017), and American Comics: A History (2021). His book Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia (2021) is a sweeping intellectual history of xenophobia—fear and hatred of the stranger—from ancient origins through the present day, arguing that understanding xenophobia's historical and psychological roots is essential to combating it. The book won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction in 2022 and was praised for its erudition, its clarity, and its contemporary urgency. Dauber is also known as a popular educator and has created widely distributed courses on Jewish humor and American literature. He lives in New York City.