The Department of Religious Studies and the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies are the recipients of the third Schusterman Visiting Israel Professor for 2010–2011. The funding was provided by a gift from the American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), the College of Arts and Sciences, and private donors from the Knoxville Jewish community for a total of $100,000. The position is held by Professor Alec Mishory, an art historian, author, and lecturer at the Open University in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The department also received a $50,000 private gift to fund the Diane and Guilford Glazer and Lea and Allen Orwitz Teaching Fellow in Modern Hebrew for 2010–2011. The scholar who was awarded the Fellowship is Dr. Michela Andreatta, University of Turin, Italy.