Ranen Omer-Sherman is the JHFE Chair of Jewish Studies. He is the author or editor of six books including Diaspora and Zionism in Jewish American Literature (2002), Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert(2006), The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches (2008), Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture (2013), Imagining Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (2015), and Amos Oz: The Legacy of a Writer in Israel and Beyond, as well as numerous essays on Jewish writers from Israel and North America. In addition, he serves as co-editor of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies.

He earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame. After two years as assistant professor at Saint Louis University in Madrid, Spain, he subsequently taught at the University of Miami for thirteen years where he was promoted to full professor of English in 2009. He joined the faculty of UofL in 2014. His research and teaching cover a broad range of topics, including diasporic identities in literature, orientalism, the literature of “passing,” and graphic novels. In addition, his work examines ethnic American literature; British romanticism; Holocaust narrative; Israeli and Palestinian literature, ethnic American narratives, and representations of utopia/dystopia.

He was a founder of a desert kibbutz, and worked for many years as a desert guide in the Sinai and Negev. The desert is still his passion.