American Jewish History

Gregg Drinkwater is a lecturer in history and Jewish studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and will be the Norman and Syril Reitman Visiting Scholar at the Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University in 2021. His research focuses on sexuality, gender, and Judaism in the modern United States and has appeared in Jewish Social Studies and the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, He is currently working on a book on the history of gay and lesbian synagogues and their role in incubating queer Jewish space. He is the co-editor of Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (New York University Press, 2009).

Zev Eleff is associate professor of Jewish History at Touro College and vice provost of Touro College Illinois. His most recent book is Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life (Wayne State University Press, 2020).

Gillian Frank is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Virginia in the department of American studies. He also co-hosts the podcast Sexing History, which explores how the history of sexuality shapes our present. He has published articles in venues such as the Journal of the History of Sexuality, Gender and History, and The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture and his public facing scholarship has appeared in publications including the Washington Post, Slate, Jezebel, the Forward, and Time. Frank is the co-editor of Devotions and Desires: Histories of Religion and Sexuality in the 20th Century United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) and Making Choice Sacred: Liberal Religion and the Struggle for Reproductive Rights Before Roe v Wade, which is forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press.

Rachel Gordan is the Shorstein fellow in American Jewish Culture at the University of Florida, where she teaches in the department of religion and the Center for Jewish Studies. She has published extensively on Laura Z. Hobson and is finishing a book about postwar American Judaism and middlebrow culture.

Hannah Greene is a doctoral candidate at New York University's Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, where she specializes in American Jewish history. Her dissertation, "Able to Be American: American Jews and the Public Charge Provision in United States Immigration Policy, 1891–1934," explores how American Jews engaged with discrimination on the basis of health, disability, and poverty in federal immigration law and its administration. She has taught at both the New School for Social Research and Cooper Union and has published on the pedagogical integration of disability into Jewish Studies. She is currently the Fellow in American Jewish Studies at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Rachel Kranson is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) and the co-editor of A Jewish Feminine Mystique?: Jewish Women in Postwar America (Rutgers University Press, 2010).

Jonathan Krasner is the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel associate professor of Jewish Education Research at Brandeis University. His books include Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers Uniersity Press, 2020), and The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education (Brandeis University Press, 2011). His research interests include the history of American Jewish sexuality, as well as the history of American Jewish childhood, youth, and education.

Brett Krutzsch is a scholar of religion at New York University's Center for Religion and Media where he is the editor of the Revealer, an online magazine about religion and society, and where he teaches in New York University's department of religious studies. His scholarship explores religion, sexuality, and LGBTQ history in the United States. He is the author of Dying to Be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics (Oxford University Press, 2019), a Lambda Literary Award finalist for best LGBTQ nonfiction book of the year. He is currently collaborating with Nora Rubel to co-edit an anthology about the television show Transparent as a landmark series in Jewish history.

Samira K. Mehta is an assistant professor of women and gender studies and of Jewish studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research and teaching focus...