Shira Wolosky received her B.A. from Brown University (summa, Phi Beta Kappa) and her Ph.D. with distinction from Princeton University in Comparative Literature in 1981. She was an Associate Professor of English at Yale University before moving to the Hebrew University in 1985, where she is Professor of English and American Studies.

Her books include Emily Dickinson: A Voice of War (Yale UP, 1984); Language Mysticism: The Negative Way of Language (Stanford UP, 1994); The Art of Poetry (Oxford UP, 2002); “Nineteenth Century American Poetry,” the Cambridge History of American Literature IV (2004); Defending Identity with Natan Sharansky (Public Affairs, 2008); The Riddles of Harry Potter (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), Poetry and Public Discourse in Nineteenth-Century America (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010); Feminist Theory Across Disciplines (Routledge, 2013), as well as other writings on literature, religion, and contemporary theory.
Her awards and research appointments include a Fulbright Fellowship, a Whiting Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Tikvah Fellowship at NYU Law School, and a Drue Heinz Visiting Professorship at Oxford. She was also a Fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, at the Katz Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and at the Hadassah Brandeis Institute. She is currently working on a book on Jewish Thought and Postmodern Theory, with special focus on Emmanuel Levinas.