Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University (Humanities), 2001

M.A., Johns Hopkins University (Philosophy), 1996

B.A., Oberlin College (History), 1987

For my current and past syllabi, go to https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/danahol/teaching.htm

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES

• Introduction to Judaism (Winter 2019)
• Inquiry in the Social Sciences: Why Remember the Past? (Winter 2020)
• Religion and Politics (Winter 2014, Winter 2015, Winter 2016, Winter 2018, Winter 2019, Winter 2020, Fall 2020; crosslisted with Department of Political Science)
• Continental Philosophy of Religion (Fall 2011, Winter 2015; crosslisted with Department of Philosophy)
• Sovereignty and Secularization (Winter 2009, Fall 2011, Fall 2012)
• Introduction to Modern Jewish Philosophy (Winter 2018)
• Modern Jewish Thought (Fall 2004, Fall 2005, Winter 2014; crosslisted with Department of Philosophy)
• God, Reason, and Evil (Winter 2003, Fall 2005, Winter 2012, Fall 2015)
• God and Philosophy (former title: "Skepticism, Atheism, and Religious Faith"; Fall 2002, Fall 2007, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019)
• Topics in Western Religious Thought: Phenomenology and Theology (Winter 2010)
• Topics in Western Religious Thought: Spinoza, Kant, Mendelssohn (Fall 2006)

GRADUATE COURSES

• Issues in the Study of Religions (Fall 2020)
• Forgiveness - Reconciliation - Resentment (Fall 2019)
• Theories of Judaism and Jewishness (Fall 2018; crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory)
• Thinking Time and History (Fall 2017; crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory)
• On and Around Derrida (Winter 2016; crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory)
• The Theopolitical in Continental Philosophy and Jewish Thought (Fall 2013; crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory)
• Forgiveness - Atonement - Reconciliation (Winter 2012, Fall 2014; crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory)
• Rosenzweig and Levinas (Winter 2010, Fall 2012; crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory)
• Judaism and the (Theo-)Political (Winter 2009; crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory)
• The (Theo-)Political: Recent Continental Approaches (Fall 2008; crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory)
• Creation Revelation Redemption (with Aaron Hughes, Winter 2007; crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory)
• Heidegger and Derrida (Winter 2006; crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory)
• The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Winter 2005, Fall 2007 [crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory])
• Topics in Modern Jewish Thought (Fall 2004, Fall 2006 [crosslisted with MA Program in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory])
• Messianism and Ethics (with Travis Kroeker, Winter 2003)
• The Philosophy of Jacques Derrida (Fall 2002)

Monographs

Ethics Out of Law: Hermann Cohen and the “Neighbor”  (University of Toronto Press, 2021)

Exemplarity and Chosenness. Rosenzweig and Derrida on the Nation of Philosophy  (Stanford University Press, 2008) Recipient of Symposium Book Award, Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, 2009

 
Translation

Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul. (Stanford University Press, 2004)

Journal Articles

• "Understanding Law ('Gesetz' and 'Recht') in Hermann Cohen, with Help from the Early Strauss," in Idealistic Studies, vol. 44, no. 2/3 (Summer/Fall 2014, published June 2015), special issue on "New Directions in the Thought of Leo Strauss," ed. Jeffrey Bernstein, 263-79.
• Introduction (with Aaron W. Hughes) to Special Issue: "Re-Imagining the Historical in Jewish Philosophy:  Beyond Historicization," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, vol. 20 (2012), no. 1: vii-xi.
• "A Thought in Which Everything Has Been Thought': On the Messianic Idea in Levinas," in Symposium. Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy / Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale, vol. 14, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 133-59.
• "The Significance of Franz Rosenzweig's Retrieval of Chosenness," in Jewish Studies Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 1 (March 2009).  Special Issue: "'A Covenant to the People, a Light to the Nations': Universalism, Exceptionalism, and the Problem of Chosenness in Jewish Thought"
• Introduction (with Joel Kaminsky) to Special Issue: "‘A Covenant to the People, a Light to the Nations’: Universalism, Exceptionalism and the Problem of Chosenness in Jewish Thought," in Jewish Studies Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 1 (March 2009).
• "Is Deconstruction a Jewish Science?  Reflections on 'Jewish Philosophy' in Light of Jacques Derrida's Judéïtés," Philosophy Today, vol. 50, no. 1 (Spring 2006), Special Issue: "Jewish Philosophy Today," ed. Claire Elise Katz.
• "Buber, Cohen, Rosenzweig, and the Politics of Cultural Affirmation," Jewish Studies Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 1 (March 2006).
  • German version: "Buber, Cohen, Rosenzweig und die Politik kultureller Affirmation," trans. Karen Barkemeyer and Arnd Wedemeyer, in Transversal. Zeitschrift für jüdische Studien, vol. 6 (2005), no. 1. Special Issue: Konstellationen Jüdischer Philosophie" ("Constellations of Jewish Philosophy"), ed. Daniel Wildmann and Ulrich Wyrwa.
• "Some Remarks on Love and Law in Hermann Cohen’s Ethics of the Neighbor" in Journal for Textual Reasoning, vol. 4, no. 1 (November 2005).  Special Issue: "The Ethics of the Neighbor."
• "On the Significance of the Messianic Idea in Rosenzweig," CrossCurrents, vol. 53,  no. 4 (Winter 2004).
• "Messianische Gespenster," trans. Arnd Wedemeyer, Die Philosophin. Forum für Philosophie und feministische Theorie, no. 21 (2000).
• "Franz Rosenzweig on Nation, Translation, and Judaism," Philosophy Today (Winter 1994).

Contributions to Books

• "'But Does He Really Not Remember?' Cohen’s Revaluing of the Spinozan Politicization of Judaism" in G.W.F. Hegel und Hermann Cohen. Wege zur Versöhnung, ed. Norbert Waszek (Freiburg: Alber, 2018) - a Festschrift for Myriam Bienenstock. 
• "Hermann Cohen über die Paradoxie des Gesetzes, aus den Quellen des Judentums und des Antijudaismus" ["Hermann Cohen on the Paradox of 'Gesetz' Out of the Sources of Judaism and Anti-Judaism"] in Ino Augsberg and Karl-Heinz Ladeur (eds.), Politische Theologie(n) der Demokratie. Das religiöse Erbe des Säkularen ["Political Theology/-ies of Democracy. The Religious Legacy of the Secular"] (Vienna: Turia & Kant, 2018).
• "'Plato Prophesied the Revelation’: The Philosophico-Political Theology of Strauss’s Philosophy and Law and the Guidance of Hermann Cohen," in Randi Rashkover and Martin Kavka (eds.), Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 66-107.
• "Das Messianische bei Levinas und Rosenzweig," trans. Gesine Palmer, in Religion und Politik. Das Messianische in Theologien, Religionswissenschaften und Philosophien des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, ed. Gesine Palmer and Thomas Brose (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 167-89.
• "Contested Forgiveness: Jankélévitch, Levinas, and Derrida at the Colloque des intellectuels juifs" in Elisabeth Weber (ed.), Living Together: Jacques Derrida's Communities of Violence and Peace (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 137-52.
• "Love-of-Neighbor and Ethics Out of Law in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen" in Christian Wiese and Martina Urban, eds., German-Jewish Thought Between Religion and Politics: Festschrift in Honor of Paul Mendes-Flohr on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 83-113.
• "Is the Other My Neighbor? Reading Levinas Alongside Hermann Cohen," in Kevin Hart and Michael Signer (eds.), The Exorbitant: Emmanuel Levinas Between Jews and Christians (Fordham University Press, 2010), 90-107.
• "Ethical-Political Universality Out of the Sources of Judaism: Reading Hermann Cohen’s 1888 Affidavit In and Out of Context," New Directions in Jewish Philosophy, ed. Aaron Hughes and Elliot Wolfson (Indiana University Press, 2009), 229-49.
• "Beyond the Law into the Law," in Aris Fioretos and Urs Engeler (eds.), Babel: Festschrift for Werner Hamacher (Verlag Urs Engeler, 2008), 250-57.
• "Levinas, Emmanuel," The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth, and Imre Szeman (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
  • Reprinted in: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory. The Johns Hopkins Guide, ed. Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth, and Imre Szeman (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012)
• "Puncturing Genres: Barthes and Derrida on the Limits of Representation," Panorama: Philosophies of the Visible, ed. Wilhelm S. Wurzer (New York/London: Continuum, 2002).