Norman Arthur Stillman, also Noam (נועם, in Hebrew; born 1945), is aJewish-American academic,historian, andOrientalist, serving as the emeritus Schusterman-Josey Professor and emeritusChair ofJudaic History at theUniversity of Oklahoma. He specializes in the intersection ofJewish andIslamic culture and history, and inOriental andSephardi Jewry, with special interest in the Jewish communities inNorth Africa. His major publications areThe Jews of Arab Lands: a History And Source Book andSephardi Religious Responses to Modernity. In the last few years, Stillman has been the executive editor of the "Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World",[1] a project that includes over 2000 entries in 5 volumes.
Stillman studied at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, receiving theB.A. (magna cum laude) in 1967 andPh.D. inOriental Studies in 1970,Shelomo Dov Goitein being his thesis advisor. He was a post-doctoralfellow at theJewish Theological Seminary of America. He has received numerous academic honors, among them thePhi Beta Kappa, the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching and the SUNY-Binghamton award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He delivered the Momigliano Lectures for theUniversity of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought and the Sherman Lectures for theSchool of Oriental and African Studies at theUniversity of London. He wasLady Davis Fellow at theHebrew University of Jerusalem in 1994-1995 and visiting fellow at theMoshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies atTel-Aviv University. He received theOhio State University Melton Center's Distinguished Humanist award in 2000 and was a visiting scholar at theInstitut national des langues et civilisations orientales inParis in 2001-2002.[2] Stillman also appears in the 2005 film,The Hebrew Project.[3] Stillman is the Chair of the Academic Committee of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA).
Stillman was married to the lateYedida Kalfon Stillman [Wikidata], Professor ofNear Eastern History and Languages, also at the University of Oklahoma, with whom he worked closely. He is the father to two children (a daughter and a son) and the grandfather of five.
Stillman's current[when?] research projects are the Jewish Society and Community in North Africa in the Modern Period and Jewish and Islamic Languages as cultural phenomena. His research has included work on modernfolk medicine,magic, andmedievalpharmacology, which have been published in "The Language and Culture of the Jews of Sefrou", as well as in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, and the Dictionary of the Middle Ages.[4] He was editor of the journal of the Association for Jewish Studies from 1989-1999. Stillman teaches courses in Medieval Jewish History, JewishHistoriography, and the History ofJudaism.[2] In 2005, he held the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Committee annual public lecture of the Center for Arts and Humanities,University of Missouri.[5]
