Rate My Professor Jarrod Tanny

Jarrod Tanny is Professor of History and the Charles and Hannah Block Distinguished Scholar in Jewish History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, M.A. from the University of Toronto, and B.A. from McGill University. Prior to joining UNCW, he served as the Schusterman Post-Doctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Ohio University. Originally from Montreal, Canada, Tanny holds the Block Endowed Professorship in Jewish History, supported by donors from the Wilmington Jewish community.

Tanny specializes in Jewish and Russian history, particularly Jewish humor. His first monograph, City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia's Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa (Indiana University Press, 2011), explores how Odessa was mythologized as a Jewish city of sin, featuring gangsters, pimps, bawdy musicians, and comedians. He has published numerous articles on the subject, including "Decoding Seinfeld’s Jewishness" in A Club of Their Own: Jewish Humorists and the Contemporary World (2016), "The Anti-Gospel of Lenny, Larry and Sarah: Jewish Humor and the Desecration of Christendom" in American Jewish History (2015), and "“A bad, bold, big-nosed, biblical brother”: refashioning the funny Jew in post-World War Two America" in Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (2017). Tanny authored The Seinfeld Talmud (Academica Press, 2023), a satirical work in which Talmudic rabbis debate Seinfeld episodes against Judaic law. He co-edited Wit Happens: Global Jewish Humor (Wayne State University Press, 2026) with Jennifer Caplan and Avinoam Patt and self-published Tales of a Yid in Dixieland: Bible Jokes, Southern Folks, and the Woke Who Shame the Jews. He has contributed op-eds on antisemitism to The Forward, The Times of Israel, The Jewish Journal, Tablet Magazine, and Jewish Review of Books. In 2022, Tanny co-founded the Jewish Studies Zionist Network, serving on its Coordinating Committee.

At UNCW, Tanny teaches undergraduate courses such as Jewish History to 1492, Jewish History Since 1492, Antisemitism and the Holocaust, and Zionism and Israel, as well as seminars on Anti-Semitism and History and Jewish Humor and History. His graduate offerings include The Jewish Holocaust, Holocaust Memory and Commemoration, and The Holocaust in European History. He engages the community with presentations, workshops, and lifelong learning courses and is currently researching Jewish humor in post-World War II America within the broader European Jewish past.