Ph.D. Nick Underwood
Biography
Nick Underwood earned my PhD in history at the University of Colorado in 2016. Since then, Nick has held postdoctoral positions at the Univeristy of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the history department at Florida Atlantic University in August 2026, he was an assistant professor of history at the College of Idaho where he also held the Berger/Neilsen Chair in Judaic Studies. Nick’s resaerch focuses on Eastern European, Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants in France during the twentieth century. His first book, Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France was published by Indiana University Press in 2022 and was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. He is currently working on a new book project about the postwar years in France, which traces the reconstruction of Yiddish cultural life there.
Most important scholarly articles
(co-edited with Meredith Scott) Jewish Ideas of France: Migration, Diaspora, and Empire (Routledge Press, 2025). https://www.routledge.com/Jewish-Ideas-of-France-Migration-Diaspora-and-Empire/Scott-Underwood/p/book/9781032508016
“Women Writers and the Postwar Remaking of Yiddish Paris,” Journal of Jewish Identities 16, nos. 1-2 (2023: 199–215. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/898146
Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France (Indiana University Press, 2022). https://iupress.org/9780253059802/yiddish-paris/
“Vegetarianism as Jewish Culture and Politics in Interwar Europe,” in Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism: Studies and New Directions, eds. Jacob Ari Labendz and Shmuly Yanklowitz (State University of New York Press). https://sunypress.edu/Books/J/Jewish-Veganism-and-Vegetarianism2
“Exposing Yiddish Paris: The Modern Jewish Culture Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair,” East European Jewish Affairs 46, no. 2 (2016): 160–75. dx.doi.org/10.1080/13501674.2016.1199189