Andrew Berns

Andrew Berns is a Professor of History at the University of South Carolina’s McCausland College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on Medieval and Early Modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history in Italy, Spain, and the Mediterranean. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (2011) and has held prestigious fellowships, including the Melville J. Kahn Fellowship at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti and the Viterbi Visiting Professorship at UCLA.

His first book, The Bible and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2015), explores how Renaissance physicians engaged with biblical texts through a scientific lens. His second book, The Land is Mine (Penn Press, 2022), examines how Sephardi Jews reinterpreted biblical land laws post-1492 expulsion. This work won the 2016 Marraro Prize.

Berns’ research spans themes of agriculture, land use, and interfaith intellectual exchange. Recent articles address Jewish agricultural practices in Crete, chess’s legal status in early modern Judaism, and Renaissance physicians’ use of Hebrew sources. His teaching includes courses on medieval history, Jewish ecology, and the history of medicine.

• Education: B.A., Reed College; M.Phil., Cambridge University; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania (2011)
• Awards: Marraro Prize (2016)