Participation Level: Grant Center Library Resource
Mike Cohen Investiture: Tulane Grant Center
“Michael R. Cohen, PhD, was formally invested in the Stuart and Suzanne Grant Chair in the American Jewish Experience at Tulane University on Jan. 17. The event also honored the establishment of the Stuart and Suzanne Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience.
Cohen also chairs the Department of Jewish Studies at the School of Liberal Arts, where he holds a Sizeler Family Professorship in Judaic Studies IV.
“”I am so humbled and honored to be leading the Grant Center and to be holding the Grant Chair,”” Cohen said. “”With the resources to support initiatives that I see as vital to the field of American Jewish studies, we have been able to develop scholarly programs that address the insularity of American Jewish history and expand its relevance.””
Cohen noted the Grant Center’s collaborative research groups, public programs, student fellowships and leadership courses.
“”The Center that I envisioned would contribute richness to the field of American Jewish studies by supporting experimentative, collaborative and interdisciplinary programs and research, would cross boundaries between academic spaces and the wider ecology of the Jewish world, and would engage students in meaningful ways that would prepare them to be leaders of the future,”” he said.
At the investiture, President Michael A. Fitts spoke of Tulane’s longstanding connection to Judaism and of the positive impact of the Jewish community on the history of New Orleans.
“”There’s no institution in the Gulf South better suited to enhance the scholarship and teaching of the rich history, diversity and bright future of the American Jewish experience – specifically, the Southern Jewish experience,”” said Fitts.
Fitts lauded the generosity of Stuart and Suzanne Grant in establishing the chair and the center as a world-class hub for exploring the varied and diverse nature of the American Jewish experience at Tulane. The Grants are dedicated Tulanians as parents of Sam (SSE ’19), now a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. The couple are also members of Tulane’s National Campaign Council, and Suzanne Grant is a member of the Board of Tulane.
Along with Cohen and Fitts, Provost Robin Forman and School of Liberal Arts Dean Brian Edwards were on hand to celebrate the special moment and to express their gratitude to Stuart and Suzanne Grant for making such an impactful gift for the Department of Jewish Studies and the campus community as a whole.”
The Jew in the Lotus 30th Anniversary Dialogue
The Jew in the Lotus is a best-selling account of dialogue between rabbis and the Dalai Lama. Poets and teachers Rodger Kamenetz and Norman Fischer
A Conversation with Holocaust Survivor Rose (Raisa) Lefkowitz Rosenkranz
Join Rose Rosenkranz, a Holocaust survivor and “miracle baby” born in a Siberian Slave Labor Camp in the heart of the war, as she shares her story of resilience and hope. The Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience at Tulane University will present an evening of powerful narratives and personal reflections of life in the United States after the Holocaust.
Mrs. Rosenkranz’s remarkable story will not only educate but serve as the inspiration for the upcoming immersive theatre production titled “Only Miracles”, Written and Directed by Tulane Visiting Assistant Professor, Dodd Loomis. This captivating production, that took place in mid-April at the historic Touro Synagogue, will bring to life the experiences of Mrs. Rosenkranz, her parents and others who lived through this dark chapter in history.
Ballots, Babies, & Banners of Peace
“Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace – Rottman Family Lecture Series with Dr. Melissa Klapper
This talk with Dr. Melissa Klapper will explore the social and political activism of American Jewish women from the 1890s through World War II, focusing on three mass women’s movements of the day: suffrage, birth control, and peace. No history of first wave feminism is complete without understanding the outsize impact of Jewish women on these movements and the powerful effect of their activism on contemporary American life.”
Evolving Representations of the Holocaust Survivor in the Post-War World
David Slucki and Golan Moskowitz discuss how public perceptions and representations of the Holocaust survivor have evolved from 1945 through the present, considering shifting cultural trends, political factors, intergenerational dynamics, and varied aesthetic approaches.
Golan Moskowitz introduces his book Wild Visionary
Wild Visionary reconsiders Maurice Sendak’s life and work in the context of his experience as a Jewish gay man. Maurice (Moishe) Bernard Sendak (1928–2012) was a fierce, romantic, and shockingly funny truth seeker who intervened in modern literature and culture. Raising the stakes of children’s books, Sendak painted childhood with the dark realism and wild imagination of his own sensitive “inner child,” drawing on the queer and Yiddish sensibilities that shaped his singular voice. Interweaving literary biography and cultural history, Golan Y. Moskowitz follows Sendak from his parents’ Brooklyn home to spaces of creative growth and artistic vision—from neighborhood movie palaces to Hell’s Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Fire Island, and the Connecticut country home he shared with Eugene Glynn, his partner of more than fifty years. Further, he analyzes Sendak’s investment in the figure of the endangered child in symbolic relation to collective touchstones that impacted the artist’s perspective—the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis. Through a deep exploration of Sendak’s picture books, interviews, and previously unstudied personal correspondence, Wild Visionary offers a sensitive portrait of the most beloved and enchanting picture-book artist of our time. For more information: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=31783
Holocaust Survivor Holograms: A Conversation with Golan Moskowitz and David Slucki
Golan Moskowitz and David Slucki discuss both advantages and critiques made of recent technological innovations employed for representing Holocaust survivor testimonies.
Histories of Migration and Global Capitalism Conference: Impact of this Conference for those who don’t work on Jewish History
Historians Andonis Piperoglou, Mae Ngai, Hasia Diner, Suzanne Rutland, and Ruth Balint discuss the impact of the Histories of Migration & Global Capitalism Conference for those who don’t work on Jewish history.
Colloquium in American Jewish Studies
This regular series brings innovative scholars to Tulane University to share and discuss new research with Tulane faculty and students, creating a space for bridging and sharing cutting edge research across disciplines and institutions. Our 2021-22 visitors have included Dr. Gregg Drinkwater (UC Berkeley) and Dr. Mijal Bitton (Shalom Hartman Institute), and our topics range from Queer Jewish studies to Sephardic Jewry and religious intermixing of Jewish and non-Jewish traditions in the American Context.
Current American Jewish Music Studies
The study of Jewish music in America is not as robust and diverse as other topics in Jewish Studies. For one thing, most approaches to Jewish Music are Eurocentric (which is true of Jewish Studies in general). But the main reason might be that the subject falls into a kind of academic no-man’s-land.