About

Jack Kugelmass, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida and serves as the Melton Legislative Professor and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist with a background and ongoing interest in critical theory. His fieldwork has been conducted in Poland and New York City, with an increasing focus on Israel. Kugelmass considers himself an urban anthropologist, engaging in neighborhood ethnography, public culture, and the study of museums, festivals, and restaurants. He has a passion for ethnography, writing, and photography, and enjoys teaching all three disciplines. In recent years, Kugelmass has developed a fascination with the anthropology of travel. His research in this area involves participation observation and the study of travel books, particularly Yiddish travel books spanning from the First World War to the 1960s. His current project analyzes these books to explore the social and political issues they reflect, especially how groups use narratives of elsewhere to understand their own precarious situations regarding home and citizenship. His scholarly work emphasizes narrative strength and the social implications of travel literature, with a focus on how these narratives serve as a means for groups to process their identity and collective memory.

Research topics

• Archaeology
• History
• Political Science
• Genealogy
• Art history
• Classics
• Philosophy
• Law
• Theology
• Art

Selected publications

• Netflix’s <i>The Club</i>

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-09-23

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract This chapter examines Netflix’s series The Club (2021–2023) as a watershed moment in Turkish television’s representation of minorities, particularly Sephardic Jews. Set in 1950s Istanbul, the series depicts the trials of Matilda Asseo, a Jewish woman navigating family trauma and social upheaval against the backdrop of Turkey’s secularization and historical events like the 1942 Wealth Tax and the 1955 anti-Greek pogrom. The nightclub setting becomes a metaphorical Ark where diverse identities find sanctuary amid social turmoil, deliberately evoking Ottoman-era rescue narratives of Iberian Jewry central to Turkish-Jewish identity. The Club challenges traditional Turkish media stereotypes while functioning as a national allegory about tolerance. Unlike other productions in the Islamic world, the series neither criticizes Israel nor portrays Jews as duplicitous outsiders. Instead, it reimagines Turkey as a suitable homeland for its minority populations, celebrating the transformative power of love. This innovative portrayal reflects both Turkey’s complex cultural syncretism and screenwriter Rana Denizer’s own multicultural heritage, offering a vision of Turkish society where diverse traditions find meaningful connection.

  PublisherDOI

• Unsettled Heritage: Living Next to Poland's Material Jewish Traces after the Holocaust. By Yechiel Weizman. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. xiv, 189 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. $45.00, hard bound.

  Slavic Review · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • History
  • Classics

  Unsettled Heritage: Living Next to Poland's Material Jewish Traces after the Holocaust. By Yechiel Weizman. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. xiv, 189 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. $45.00, hard bound. - Volume 82 Issue 2

  PublisherDOI

• JEWels

  2023-02-01

  book
  PublisherDOI

• AFTERWORD “I’m a Gentile!” Border Dramas and Jewish Continuity

  Berghahn Books · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Genealogy
  • Art
  PublisherDOI

• Chapter 11. Between the Wild and the Civilized: A Yiddish Travel Writer in Peru

  University of Pennsylvania Press eBooks · 2021-08-02

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 16 Nothing Is Forever: Remembering the Centennial

  University of Toronto Press eBooks · 2021-10-11

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• ‘Blinded by Their Zeal’: Guide Books to the Holy Land

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc eBooks · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Archaeology
  PublisherDOI

• Strange encounters: Expat and refugee Polish-Jewish journalists in Poland and Germany shortly after World War II

  2019-04-18 · 1 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Strange encounters: expat und refugee Polish-Jewish journalists in Poland and Germany shortly after World War II

  2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• A LOOK AT THE LAST JEWS OF POLAND

  2018-06-09

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Barbara Kirshenblatt–Gimblett

  4 shared

• Jack Santino

  2 shared

• Flash Rosenberg

  2 shared

• Rabbi Edward Schecter

  2 shared

• Joan Bildner

  Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

  2 shared

• Lisa Lipkin

  2 shared

• Susannah Heschel

  2 shared

• Riv‐Ellen Prell

  Minneapolis Institute of Arts

  2 shared