I am a professor of modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history, with a particular interest in Jewish intellectuals, secularization, urban spaces, and modern Jewish identity. Since arriving at George Washington University in Fall 2007, I have completed three books, "The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image," "Spinoza's Challenge to Jewish Thought: Writings on His Life, Philosophy, and Legacy," and "Ghetto: The History of a Word. Published in 2012 by Princeton University Press, "The First Modern Jew" traces the history of the seventeenth-century heretic and philosopher Benedict Spinoza in modern Jewish thought and culture, spanning 350 years and three continents. It was recognized by the American Academy for Jewish Research as the best first book in Jewish studies, and was also named a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in history by the Jewish Book Council. My edited volume "Spinoza's Challenge to Jewish Thought" was published in March 2019 by Brandeis University Press. I wrote a 10,000-word introduction to the book, in addition to selecting and arranging all the readings (which span 350 years of Spinoza's Jewish reception), writing prefatory notes for and annotating them, and working with a team of translators to produce reliable English translations. CHOICE described the book as "a crucial addition to Spinoza scholarship" and rate it as "highly recommended." My most recent book, "Ghetto: The History of a Word," traces the word "ghetto" from when it was first used with reference to the Jews in 16th-century Venice to the present. It is a work of synthesis that brings together European and American Jewish history, 19th-century German Jewish literature, immigration history, Holocaust studies, and African-American Studies. It was published by Harvard University Press. A recent review of the book in the "Jewish Review of Books" claimed: "Schwartz performs marvels of clarification and condensation in steering the reader through the labyrinthian twists, turns, and hidden alleyways that mark this terminological odyssey. He deftly traces the ghetto’s Italian origins, its subsequent 19th-century transformation into a metaphor for the bygone Jewish age (even when it was not yet entirely gone), its deployment by 20th-century American sociologists as a broad paradigm for the immigrant ethnic enclave, its usurpation by the conquering Nazi regime in Poland, and finally its appropriation and application to the American inner city, where its usage became an object of competition and a bone of contention between African Americans and Jews. Astonishingly, he demonstrates equal command of all of these disparate contexts." At GW, I teach a wide range of courses related to Jewish history, including a survey of Jewish civilization from the Bible to modernity and an introduction to modern Jewish history, as well as theories of history and historiography more generally. This spring I have introduced a new History and Honors' seminar on the history of antisemitism. I completed a six-year term as director of Judaic Studies and a two-year stint on the Faculty Senate in the spring of 2020 and am currently in my second year serving as chair of the History Department.