Hillel Schwartz

Hillel Schwartz is a cultural historian, poet, translator, and medical case manager (co-founder in 2008 of Sage Case Management, Encinitas, CA). An independent scholar, he was awarded a Berlin Prize in Cultural History for 2014 by the American Academy in Berlin, where he spent the autumn studying the changing notions, nature, and experience of emergency over the last two centuries. In the past he has taught on occasion at the University of Florida, San Diego State University, and UC San Diego, with appointments in departments of Communication, History, Humanities, Literature, Religious Studies, and Visual Arts. He has also enjoyed non-academic appointments as Senior Fellow, Millennium Institute, Arlington, VA (1995-2000), seeking to nourish stable networks among NGOs working toward a sustainable future, and as Senior Scholar, International Desk, White House Millennium Council (1998-2000). He has been lead scholar for four national and regional public arts/humanities projects funded by the NEH or state humanities agencies, as well as historical consultant to EXPO2000 in Hannover (Germany) concerning the design of the theme pavilion, “The Future of the Past,” and co-chair (1996-99) of the Drafting Group of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, shaping the core interfaith document, a Call to the Leading Institutions.

Educated at Brandeis, Berkeley, and Yale (Ph.D, 1974, Porter Prize), Hillel Schwartz has published seven books of non-fiction, the most recent of which is “Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang”, and “Beyond” (Zone/MIT, 2011). Prior books have been translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, and Chinese. His own translations from the Korean, in collaboration with Sunny Jung, have resulted in two volumes of poetry: Kim Nam-jo, Rain, Sky, Wind, Port (Codhill Press, 2014); Ko Un, Abiding Places: Korea South and North (Tupelo Press, 2006; finalist, Balcones Prize). A widely published poet himself, his work has appeared in more than two hundred major journals, including “ACM”, “Agni Review”, “Beloit Poetry Journal”, “Boulevard”, “Centennial Review”, “Chicago Review”, “Common Knowledge”, “Commonweal”, “Denver Quarterly”, “Descant”, “Fiddlehead”, “Field”, “Literary Review”, “Malahat Review”, “New Orleans Review”, “Poetry Northwest”, “Prairie Schooner”, “Salmagundi”, “Stand”, “Tendril”, “Texas Review”, and “Threepenny Review”, as well as the 1997 edition of Best American Poetry, ed. James Tate. He has been a keynote or guest speaker at sound/art festivals, research institutes, academic conferences, and association meetings in more than forty cities in eleven countries.