English Department Faculty

 
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English Department
Stony Brook University
Humanities Bldg.
Stony Brook, NY
11794-5350
Phone: 631.632.7400

Stephen Spector

CHAIR. Professor, Ph.D. Yale University, 1973. Religion and politics; Evangelical Christianity, Israel, and the Bush administration; Israel and the Ethiopian Jews; The Bible; Middle English literature, especially religious drama

Humanities, Chairman's office; M 1:00-2:15, W 3:45-5:30 and by appointment
631-632-7400
sspector@notes.sunysb.edu

Current Course:

Fall 2008
  • The English Language (EGL 380) MW 2:20-3:40

Selected Publications

Books:
  • Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism.  Oxford University Press, forthcoming
  • Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews. Oxford University Press, 2005.
  • The N-Town Play, Editor. Early English Text Society: Oxford University Press, Supplementary Series, volumes 11 and 12, 1991.
  • The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World, co-editor. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991.
  • The Genesis of the N-town Cycle. New York and London: Garland Press, 1988.
  • Essays in Paper Analysis, Editor. Washington, London, Toronto: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1987.

Articles:
  • “Empathy and Enmity in the Prioress’s Tale,” in Lee Patterson, ed., Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales: A Casebook
  • "Time, Space, and Identity in the Play of the Sacrament," in The Stage as Mirror, ed. Alan Knight (Bury St. Edmunds: Boydel & Brewer, 1997).
  • "Empathy and Enmity in the Prioress's Tale," in The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World, co-editor (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991).
  • "The Oberammergau Passion Play," Theologische Realenzyklopaedia, 1990.
  • "Anti-Semitism and the English Mystery Plays," reprinted in The Drama of the Middle Ages, eds. Clifford Davidson, C.J. Gianakaris, and John H. Stroupe (New York, 1982), pp. 328-41. Reprinted 1983, 1985.
  • "New Light on Southerne's The Disappointment, 1684," The Library, 6th series, 2 (1980): 465-66.
  • "Symmetries in Watermarks within Gatherings" (a summary of my work on manuscript collation), Manuscripta, 1979.
  • "Symmetry in Watermark Sequences," Studies in Bibliography
  • "The Provenance of the N-town Codex," The Library, 6th Series, 1 (1979): 25-33.
  • "Anti-Semitism and the English Mystery Plays," Comparative Drama 13 (1979): 3-16.
  • "Anti-Semitism and the English Mystery Plays" (a summary of my work, with suggestions for further study), The Shakespeare Newsletter 29 (1979): 14.
  • "Paper Evidence and the Genesis of the Macro Plays," Mediaevalia 5 (1979): 217-32.
  • "Symmetry in Watermark Sequences," Studies in Bibliography
  • "The Composition and Development of an Eclectic Manuscript: Cotton Vespasian D. Viii," Leeds Studies in English (1977): 62-83. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 183-209. 31 (1978), 162-78. 31 (1978), 162-78.



stephen spector

Stephen Spector's principal scholarly interests are in the Bible, Christianity, and Judaism.  He spent nearly twenty years editing a cycle of fifteenth-century mystery plays that dramatize biblical and apocryphal stories from Creation to Doomsday.  In the process, he addressed many philological questions and bibliographic issues involving physical evidence in manuscripts.  He also analyzed the representation of the Jew in the drama and other medieval texts.  He then inexplicably turned to writing modern history and journalism in a book about Operation Solomon, the Israeli rescue of the Ethiopian Jews.  His current book, on evangelical Christian support of Israel and its impact on the Bush administration, will be published in November.

Professor Spector has won numerous fellowships and grants, including five from the NEH, as well as prizes from the Medieval Academy of America and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.  He has held research fellowships at the National Humanities Center and Wesleyan University's Center for Humanities and was a Visiting Scholar at Hebrew University.

Operation Solomon