Dr. Catherine Chatterley
Founding Director
Catherine Chatterley is a Canadian historian, specializing in the study of modern European history, the Holocaust, and research on antisemitism. She is the Founding Director of the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA) and the Founding Editor-in-Chief of Antisemitism Studies, the first scholarly journal devoted to the study of antisemitism.
Chatterley appeared in the documentary called "Unmasked: Judeophobia" (2011), where she was one of the scholars interviewed. That same year, she was invited as an expert scholar to participate in the Canadian All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism, which produced the Ottawa Protocol.
Her undergraduate studies included European history and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at the University of Manitoba, European Intellectual History at Concordia University (Montreal), followed by a doctorate in Modern European and Jewish History, and German-Jewish Literature, which she completed at The University of Chicago under the direction of Moishe Postone and Michael Geyer.
Syracuse University Press published her first book, Disenchantment: George Steiner and the Meaning of Western Civilization After Auschwitz, in their series on Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust, edited by Steven T. Katz. Disenchantment was named a 2011 National Jewish Book Award Finalist in the category of Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. Alongside Juan Asensio in France and Ricardo Gil Soeiro in Portugal, Chatterley is recognized as a leading scholar of George Steiner, an internationally renowned cultural critic, and has published two chapters in international collections about his work, both edited by Ricardo Gil Soeiro. Steiner died on February 3, 2020, and Chatterley wrote an obituary for the Times of Israel.
As the Founding Director of CISA, she was invited to be a member of the official government delegation to Israel in January 2014. From 2002 to 2008 Chatterley taught European history at the University of Winnipeg and from 2007 to 2018 at the University of Manitoba.
Dr. Chatterley can be contacted through CISA: cisa@canisa.org