Topic: Gender
“Make me a King” Short Film Screening and Talkback
The Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience screened Make Me a King, a short film about Ari, a Jewish Drag King ostracized by their family,
America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today
What does it mean to be a Jewish woman in America? Dr. Pamela S. Nadell explores her groundbreaking history of how Jewish women maintained their identity and influenced social activism as they wrote themselves into American history. Dr. Nadell’s book won the National Jewish Book Award–Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year.
What Girls Learn in Jewish Families | Professor Ilana Horwitz
“In the past, Jewish families, like many others, offered girls fewer educational opportunities than boys. But that has not been the case for some time
Moishe’s Queer and Wild Rumpus
In this episode, we speak with Golan Moskowitz, Assistant Professor in the Department of Jewish Studies at Tulane University, about Maurice Sendak. Golan discusses Sendak,
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.”
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
Yiddish Studies
At the annual Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) meeting this December, there was a notable refrain: “Yiddish is everywhere!” Over three days, more than forty panels, roundtables, and seminars featured at least one—and often more than one—presentation that substantially engaged with Yiddish-language materials. The topics ranged across fields, including history, literature, musicology
Beyond Ashkenaz: New Research on Ethnic Jewish Diversity in the Americas
Debates surrounding Jewish identity, culture, and religion abound across time and space. At the root of the discourse are questions about group boundaries; inclusion and exclusion; and the foundations of Jewish identities. In the United States, Jews from diverse, non-Ashkenazi backgrounds often find their Jewishness questioned, their stories marginalized. However, mirroring a broader trend, the
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.
