Exploring Rare Judaica at Hopkins

Samuel Spinner received his BA from Johns Hopkins University and his PhD from Columbia University in 2012. From 2012 to 2014, he was the Ross Visiting Assistant Professor of Yiddish and Jewish Studies in the Department of Germanic Languages at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 2014-2017 he was a postdoctoral fellow at Hopkins. His research and teaching encompass Yiddish and German-Jewish literature and culture from the 19th century to the present. His interests include modernism; the history of anthropology; museum studies; visual culture; and Holocaust studies.

Dr. Mackenzie (Mack) Zalin is Librarian for Classics, Comparative Thought and Literature, Jewish Studies, and Modern Languages and Literatures in the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University. He earned a PhD in Classical Studies from Duke University and a Master of Science in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Zalin oversees collection development, reference, and instruction in the Sheridan Libraries for French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, and Yiddish languages and literatures.

In addition to his regular duties at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Zalin serves as the chair of the Advisory Board of the American Office of L’Année philologique to the Society for Classical Studies. He is also an ex officio member of the Société Internationale de Bibliographie Classique. His recent scholarship evinces an array of interests in early modern Spanish and Latin, as can be seen in co-authored publications in the Bulletin of the Comediantes and Grey Room.