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English Department Faculty

 
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English Department
Stony Brook University
Humanities Bldg.
Stony Brook, NY
11794-5350
Phone: 631.632.7400

Stephen Spector

CHAIR. Professor, Ph.D. Yale University, 1973. Religion and politics; Evangelical Christianity, Israel, and the Bush administration; Israel and the Ethiopian Jews; The Bible; Middle English literature, especially religious drama

Humanities, Chairman's office; M 1:15-2:15, MW 3:45-4:45, and by appointment
631-632-7400
sspector@notes.sunysb.edu

Current Course:

Fall 2009
  • The English Language (EGL 380) MW 2:20-3:40

Spring 2010
  • Chaucer (EGL 340)

Selected Publications

Books:
  • Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism.  Oxford University Press, 2009.
  • Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews. Oxford University Press, 2005.
  • The N-Town Play, Editor. Early English Text Society: Oxford University Press, Supplementary Series, volumes 11 and 12, 1991.
  • The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World, co-editor. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991.
  • The Genesis of the N-town Cycle. New York and London: Garland Press, 1988.
  • Essays in Paper Analysis, Editor. Washington, London, Toronto: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1987.

Articles:
  • “I Will Bless Those Who Bless You,” Midstream, Summer 2009, 13-17.
  • “Evangelical Support for Israel: Promise, Prophecy, Gratitude, Love and Remorse,” Jerusalem Post Christian Edition, May 2009.
  • “What Every Jew Needs to Know about Evangelicals,” Jewish Week, May 6, 2009; reprinted in Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, May 22, 2009.
  • “Feeding Crocodiles,” Oxford University Press Blog, April 8, 2009.
  • “Five Questions for Sarah Palin,” Jerusalem Post, October 27, 2008.
  • “Faith Tints Palin’s Political Palette,” Newsday, September 16, 2008, reprinted in Chicago Tribune.com, September 16, 2008, Baltimore Sun.com, September 16, 2008, South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com, September 16, 2008.
  • “Empathy and Enmity in the Prioress’s Tale,” in Lee Patterson, ed., Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales: A Casebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 183-209.
  •  “Unfinished Rescue of the Falas Mura,” The Jerusalem Report, January 9, 2006.
  • "An American Heroine and the Exodus of the Ethiopian Jews: The Untold Story behind a Crisis,” Midstream, July-August 2005.   
  • “Leaving Ethiopia for Zion,” reprinted on the Spazio forum website (Italy), March 2005 (www.spazioforum.net/forum/index).
  • “Leaving Ethiopia for Zion,” reprinted on the Jewish Agency for Israel website (Israel), February 2005 (www.jafi.org.il/papers/2005/feb).
  • “Leaving Ethiopia for Zion,” Jerusalem Post, February 13, 2005.
  • “Time, Space, and Identity in the Play of the Sacrament,” in The Stage as Mirror, ed. Alan Knight (Bury St. Edmunds: Boydel & Brewer, 1997).
  • “Empathy and Enmity in the Prioress’s Tale,” in The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World, Stephen Spector, co-editor (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991).
  • “The Oberammergau Passion Play,” Theologische Realenzyklopaedia, 1990.
  • “Anti-Semitism and the English Mystery Plays,” reprinted in The Drama of the Middle Ages, eds. Clifford Davidson, C.J. Gianakaris, and John H. Stroupe (New York, 1982), pp. 328-41.  Reprinted 1983, 1985.
  • “New Light on Southerne’s The Disappointment, 1684,” The Library, 6th series, 2 (1980): 465-66.
  • “Symmetries in Watermarks within Gatherings” (a summary of my work on manuscript collation), Manuscripta, 1979.
  • “Paper Evidence and the Genesis of the Macro Plays,” Mediaevalia 5 (1979): 217-32.
  • “Anti-Semitism and the English Mystery Plays,” Comparative Drama 13 (1979): 3-16.
  • “The Provenance of the N-town Codex,” The Library, 6th Series, 1 (1979): 25-33.
  • “Symmetry in Watermark Sequences,” Studies in Bibliography 31 (1978), 162-78.
  • “The Composition and Development of an Eclectic Manuscript: Cotton Vespasian D. Viii,” Leeds Studies in English (1977): 62-83.




stephen spector

Stephen Spector's principal scholarly interests are in the Bible, Christianity, and Judaism.  He spent nearly twenty years editing a cycle of fifteenth-century mystery plays that dramatize biblical and apocryphal stories from Creation to Doomsday.  In the process, he addressed many philological questions and bibliographic issues involving physical evidence in manuscripts.  He also analyzed the representation of the Jew in the drama and other medieval texts.  He then inexplicably turned to writing modern history and journalism in a book about Operation Solomon, the Israeli rescue of the Ethiopian Jews.  His most recent book, Evangelicals and Israel, on Christian Zionism and its impact on the Bush administration, was published in 2009.

Professor Spector has won numerous fellowships and grants, as well as prizes from the Medieval Academy of America and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.  He has held research fellowships at the National Humanities Center and Wesleyan University's Center for Humanities and was a Visiting Scholar at Hebrew University.


Operation Solomon