American historian

Steven B. Bowman is an American scholar and academic particularly known for his research of Greek and Jewish relations throughout the past three millennia, with emphasis on Byzantine and Holocaust periods. He is a professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches a wide range of courses in ancient and medieval Judaic Studies and modern Israel.

Biography

Bowman received his B.A. in history from the University of Massachusetts in 1964. In 1974 he completed his Ph.D. dissertation at Ohio State University on Byzantine Jewry during the Paeleologue period. He was appointed to the faculty of Judaic Studies in the University of Cincinnati in 1980, and became a full Professor in 1990. Bowman published The Jews of Byzantium, 1204-1453 in 1985, followed by several books exploring the history of the Greek Jews during the Second World War. His fourth book, The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940-1945, was described by K.E. Fleming as one which "produced a careful and multilayered examination of Greek Jewry’s most devastating five years", was characterized by Nikos Tzafleris as "the most complete chronicle to date of the Holocaust of Greek Jewry" and by Aristotle Kallis as a "fascinating book" including a "complex set of stories relating to individuals, families, and entire communities". In 2011 Bowman finished his Annotated Translation of Sepher Yosippon, to be published in 2012 as the first book of the Hackmey Jewish Classics series at Harvard University. Bowman is the editor in chief of the Sephardi and Greek Holocaust Library that has published several Greek Holocaust memoirs and had edited many other books.

Grants and awards

Beginning in 1971, Bowman has received numerous awards for his scholarship, three Fulbright Awards, two National Endowment for the Humanities awards, and numerous awards in the United States (including the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, Littauer Foundation, and the Miles Lerner Fellow at The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum), England (Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at Oxford) and Israel (Postdoctoral) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and research and travel grants to Yad Vashem) and was a Gennadeion Fellow in Athens. For his sabbatical in 2010-2011 Bowman received a Fulbright-Hays Travel Abroad Award for research at Cambridge University and a Lady Davis Fellowship (Postdoctoral) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for work on a monograph about Sefer Yosippon. He has lectured widely nationally and internationally on various aspects of Greek Jews and their relations with Greeks, and is particularly interested in exploring Greek and Jewish nationalism.

Professional activities

Bowman has been a visiting professor at New York University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a visiting lecturer at Haifa University and the University of California, La Jolla. In 2010, Bowman was appointed a Visiting Professor at Wolfson College (Cambridge University) to work on Genizah fragments of Sefer Yosippon.

Bowman has been a member of the Medieval Academy of America since 1963; since 1983 he was a National Council Representative of the American Academic Association for Peace in the Middle East (APPME), and since 1981 he is President Emeritus of the Faculty Council of Jewish Affairs at the University of Cincinnati. Bowman has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Hellenic Diaspora, Byzantine Studies/Etudes Byzantines and Shofar. Bowman has been a sometime member of a number of scholarly associations. He is also a member of the United States Byzantine Committee.

Selected publications

Articles

The following is a selection from over 80 refereed journal articles and book chapters authored by Bowman.

Bowman has also contributed articles on Greek Jewry and other topics to a 15 encyclopedias, including The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust and the Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs.

Books

Edited book