Dr. Ranen Omer-Sherman is the author of Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (2015, Penn State University Press), Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert (2006, University of Illinois Press), and Diaspora and Zionism in Jewish American Literature (2002, Brandeis University Press), as well as the editor of The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches.
In his teaching and scholarship, Ranen Omer-Sherman, Ph.D., specializes in Israeli literature and film as well as Jewish literature of the diaspora.
Special areas of interest include the Jewish graphic novel, coming-of-age narratives, Holocaust memoir, fiction, and poetry, representations of war in contemporary Israeli arts and culture, and Israeli and Palestinian representations of “the other” in art and film. Dr. Omer-Sherman is the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence Chair of Judaic Studies at the University of Louisville.
At age 17, Omer-Sherman moved from his native California to Israel, where he served in the Israeli military, worked as a desert guide in the Negev and Sinai, and helped found a kibbutz. After 13 years, he returned to the United States to attend college and graduate school. 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 U of L in 2014.