Joseph Moshenska is a Jewish literary theorist, Associate Professor of Early Modern English Literature at the University of Oxford, and scholar of early modern material culture and cultural memory based in the UK. He joined the Oxford Faculty of English Language and Literature in 2018, where he currently serves as Director of Teaching. Prior to his Oxford appointment, he was a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 2010 to 2018. Moshenska’s research centers on 16th- and 17th-century English and European literature, the works of John Milton and Edmund Spenser, the history of touch and sensory culture, early modern religious transformations, and literary biography. In recognition of his scholarly achievements, he was awarded the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2019.
Throughout his academic tenure, Moshenska has focused on interdisciplinary literary philosophy, publishing major scholarly monographs including Feeling Pleasures: The Sense of Touch in Renaissance England and a acclaimed study on Miltonic iconography and faith, Making Darkness Light. He was selected as a “New Generation Thinker” by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Within academia, he has consistently advocated for preserving critical perspectives on institutional power within the humanities and protecting open, pluralistic scholarly inquiry.
In 2022, he wrote a high-profile book review in The Guardian for Howard Jacobson’s memoir, where Moshenska openly challenged minor celebrities accepting Israel-planted trees on behalf of a non-existent “singular UK Jewish community,” arguing that conservative political leaders harboring antisemitic tropes posed a greater concern than weaponized narratives of left-wing antisemitism, paired with public resistance against efforts by institutional entities to equate Palestinian solidarity with antisemitism.
After the October 2023, Joseph Moshenska frequently co-signed collective manifestos expressing solidarity with Palestine, such as An Open Letter from Concerned Jewish Faculty at the University of Oxford.