Nick Underwood

Nick Underwood

Associate Professor and Raddock Chair for Holocaust Studies

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters

History

Boca Raton Campus

Areas of Expertise

  • Modern European Jewish History
  • Holocaust History
  • Yiddish History and Cultural Studies聽
  • Modern French History

Nick Underwood is an Associate Professor of History and holds the Raddock Family Chair for Holocaust Studies. Underwood specializes in twentieth century European Jewish history, with a focus on Yiddish culture and Yiddish-speaking immigrant Jews in France. He is author of Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France (Indiana University Press, 2022), which was named a Finalist for a National Jewish Book Award in 2023.

He is also a co-editor (with Meredith Scott) of the edited volume Jewish Ideas of France: Migration, Diaspora, and Empire (Routledge, 2025). He is currently working on two new book projects, "Jewish Migration, Yiddish Culture, and the Reconstruction of Post-Holocaust France, 1944-1965鈥� and 鈥淐ommunity Development as Antifascism: The Rue Amelot and Jewish Resistance in Vichy and Nazi Occupied France.鈥� In addition to these book publications, he has co-edited special issues of journals on topics ranging from Yiddish theatre, Jewish urban histories, and the cultures of global antifascism. His work has also been published in a number of peer reviewed journals, including Archives Juives, Contemporary French Civilization, East European Jewish Affairs, French Politics, Culture & Society, Jewish Culture and History, Jewish Social Studies, Journal of Jewish Identities, Theatre Survey, and Urban History as well as in several edited volumes.

Underwood鈥檚 research has been supported by fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the Idaho Humanities Council, Brandeis University鈥檚 Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, Western Society for French History as well as a Fordham University-New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship and the Joseph Kremen Memorial Fellowship in East European Jewish Arts, Music, and Theatre from the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at Leipzig University. During the 2026-2027 academic year, he was awarded a Fulbright US Scholar Award to be in residence at the University of Warsaw in Poland.

He has also served professional associations in executive roles. He recently served as president of the Western Society for French History and currently serves as the vice president for program for the Association of Jewish Studies.

Before coming to FAU, he was an Assistant Professor of History at The College of Idaho where he held the Berger-Neilsen Chair in Judaic Studies.

Curriculum Vitae (Available upon request)

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

The College of Arts & Letters offers degree programs and certificates in the performing arts, fine arts, languages and social sciences.