The Feinstein Center at Temple University announces its annual summer fellowship to support research in the American Jewish experience. Predoctoral and postdoctoral scholars studying any area of American Jewish life are eligible for the grant of up to $4,000. Applications should include a proposal of no more than five pages, a letter of recommendation, a CV, and a detailed budget of how funds will be used. Materials are due by April 1, 2024. We prefer that all application materials be emailed to feinsteincenter@temple.edu.

You may also mail the materials to:
Feinstein Center of American Jewish History​
Temple University
916 Gladfelter Hall 025-24
1115 West Berks Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122-6089

2023 Summer Fellowship Award Recipients

The Feinstein Center for American Jewish History announces the selection of its Summer Fellows for 2023:

Past Fellows 1994-2002 

2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007-2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996-1995
1994
  • Natalia Dubno Shevin, New York University, Labor to Labor’: How American Labor Unions Supported Israel, 1948-1977
  • Uri Schreter , Harvard University, A New Thing for Israel’: Jewish Music and Politics in Postwar New York City 
  • Hadas Binyamini, New York University, Jewish American grassroots conservatism from the 1960s to the late 1980s
  • Morgan Carlton, University of Michigan, Warring of the Classes: Jewish-American & African-American Mothers between World Wars
  • Samantha M. Cooper, New York University, Cultivating High Society: American Jews engaging European Opera in New York, 1880-1940
  • Amy Fedeski, University of Virginia (Honorable Mention), What We Want To Do As Americans”: Jewish Political Activism and United States Refugee Policy, 1965-1989
  • Lucas Wilson, Florida State University (Honorable Mention), Postmemorial Structures: Portraits of Survivor-Family Homes in Second-Generation Holocaust Literature and Oral History
  • Ariel Cohen, University of Virginia, Displaying Art and Exhibiting Philanthropy: Jews, Gender, and Museums in the United States, 1915 – 1958
  • Andrew Fogel, Purdue University, Racial architecture, sociocultural impact, and reception of the superhero fantasy
  • Hannah Greene, New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Able to Be American: American Jews and the Public Charge Provision in United States Immigration Policy, 1891-1934
  • Jeremiah Lockwood, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, Stanford University, LA Archivera
  • April Rosenblum, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, York University, Crossing Columbia Avenue: Microhistory, Black-Jewish Relations and the Murder of William Seidler
  • Alissa Schapiro, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, Northwestern University, Lest We Forget: American Art, Visual Culture, and Antisemitism during World War II
  • Gregg Drinkwater, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, University of Colorado Boulder, Building Queer Judaism Gay Synagogues and the Transformation of an American Religious Community, 1965-1990
  • Peter Labuza, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, University of Southern California, When A Handshake Meant Something: The Emergence of Entertainment Law and The Constitution of Hollywood Art, 1944-1967
  • Anastasiia Strakhova, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, Emory University, Imagining Emigration: Crossing the Borders of Russian Jewry during the Era of Mass Migration, 1881- 1917
  • Ronnie Grinberg, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, The Schusterman Center for Judaic & Israel Studies at the University of Oklahoma, My Pen is My Weapon: The New York Intellectuals and Masculinity, 1930-1980
  • Sara Halpern, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, The Ohio State University, The World of 1939 Stood Still For Us: European Jewish Emigration from Shanghai, 1946-1951
  • Geoffrey Levin, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, New York University, Another Nation: Israel, American Jews, and Palestinian Rights, 1949-1977
  • Mathias Fuelling, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, Temple University, Stollpersteine 
  • Aaron Welt, The Kevy Kaiserman Memorial Fellowship, New York University, The Shtarkers of Progressive Era New York; Crime, Labor, and Capitalism in an Age of Mass Migration, 1900 -1930
  • Stefanie Halpern, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, Jewish Theological Seminary, Crossing Over From the Yiddish Rialto to the American Stage
  • Holly Genovese, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, Temple University, A Pennsylvania State Historical Marker for the Hebrew Literature Society
  • Avigail Oren, The Kevy Kaiserman Memorial Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon University, Adjusting to Change: The Jewish Community Center Movement in Postwar Urban America, 1945-1980
  • Julia Alford, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, Temple University, Reaching a Complete Understanding of Klezmer Music
  • Max D. Baumgarten, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, University of California, Los Angeles, From Watts to Rodney King: Peoplehood, Politics, and Citizenship in Jewish Los Angeles, 1965-1992
  • Shari Rabin, The Kevy Kaiserman Memorial Fellowship, Yale University, Manifest Jews: Mobility and the Making of American Judaism, 1820-1877
  • Rachel Gross, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, Princeton University, Objects of Affection: The Material Religion of American Jewish Nostalgia
  • Geraldine Gudefin, Feinstein Center Summer Fellowship, Brandeis University, Navigating the Civil and Religious Worlds: Jewish Marriage and Divorce in France and the United States (1880s-1920s)
  • Zalman Newfield, The Kevy Kaiserman Memorial Fellowship, New York University Between the Sacred and the Secular: Communal Continuity and Change in Contemporary Lubavitch Society
  • Zev Eleff, Brandeis University Declarations of Independence: The Formation of Religious discourse and movements within American Judaism
  • Joshua Furman, University of Maryland“ Jew and American in the Making”: Approaches to Education and Childrearing in the American Jewish Community, 1945-1967
  • Britt P. Tevis, University of Wisconsin – Madison May It Displease the Court: Jewish Lawyers and the Democratization of American Law 
  • Amy Weiss, The Kevy Kaiserman Memorial Fellowship, New York University, Between Cooperation and Competition: American Jewish and Protestant Zionists, 1939-1977
  • Joseph Gindi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Claiming Tradition: Contesting the Shift toward Ashkenazi Orthodoxy among Syrian Jews 
  • Rachel Rothstein, University of Florida at Gainsville “A Relationship of Equals”: Polish and American Jews and the Creation of a New Polish Jewishness since 1968
  • Katie Rosenblatt, University of Michigan “To Protect the Aims of Collective Bargaining with Collective Buying”: Cooperative Housing, Ecumenical Activism, and the Labor Movement in the Early Cold War 
  • Ronit Yael Stahl, The Kevy Kaiserman Memorial Fellowship, University of Michigan God, War, and Politics: The American Military Chaplaincy and the Making of Modern American Religion
  • Garrett Eisler, Graduate Center, CUNY “This Theater is a Battlefield”: Political Performance and Jewish-American Identity, 1933-1948
  • Rachel Feinmark, University of Chicago Look for the Union Label: The American Federation of Labor and the Jewish Labor Committee’s Partnership for Economic Justice and International Human Rights, 1933-1955
  • Pearl Gluck, City College of New York Where is Joel Baum: The Gender Dynamics and Community Politics of Post Holocaust Williamsburg 
  • Leandra Zarnow, University of California, Santa Barbara Bella Abzug and the Promise of Progressive Change in Cold War United States
  • Caroline Luce (Honorable Mention), University of California, Los Angeles Baking and the Jewish Labor Movement in Los Angeles 1920-1950
  • Amaryah Orenstein (Honorable Mention), Brandeis University “Let My People Go” The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and the Rise of American Jewish Identity Politics
  • Adam Mendelsohn, College of Charleston Center City: Philadelphia and the English-speaking Jewish World in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
  • Maya Balakirsky Katz (Honorable Mention), Touro College The Art of Hasidism: Chabad Dynasty and Visual Culture
  • Rebecca Kobrin (Honorable Mention), Columbia University Creative Destruction: East European Jewish Immigrant Bankers, Financial Failure and the Reshaping of American Capitalism
  • David S. Koffman (Honorable Mention), New York University The Jews’ Indian: Native Americans in the Jewish Imagination and Experience, 1824-1945 
  • Rachel Kranson, New York University Grappling with the Good Life: Anxieties of Jewish Affluence in Postwar America
  • Joshua Nathaniel Aaron Lambert (Honorable Mention), University of Michigan Unclean Lips: Obscenity and the Jews in North American Literature
  • David S. Koffman (Honorable Mention), New York University The Jews’ Indian: Â Native Americans in the Jewish Experience and Imagination, 1824-1945
  • Erik M. Greenberg (Honorable Mention), University of California, Los Angeles “Not for This Did the Prophets Sing and the Martyrs Die:” American Jewish Resistance to the Melting Pot, Circa 1900-1920 

2007

  • Marni Davis, Emory University On the Side of Liquor: American Jews and the Politics of Alcohol, 1870-1936

2006

  • Lauren Strauss, Jewish Theological Seminary of America Painting the Town Red: Jewish Visual Artists, Yiddish Culture, and Progressive Politics in New York, 1917-1939
  • Valerie Thaler, Yale University The Reshaping of American Jewish Identity, 1945 to 1960
  • Leah Levitz Fishbane (Honorable Mention), Brandeis University An ‘American Hebrew’ Renaissance: Young American Jews and the Challenge of Leadership in Late-19th Century American Judaism
  • Mia Sara Bruch, Stanford University The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man: American Jews and American Religious Pluralism, 1941-1960
  • Joshua A. Perelman (Honorable Mention), New York University Choreographing Identity: Modern Dance and American Jewish Life, 1924-1964
  • Ari Y. Kelman (Honorable Mention), University of Pennsylvania Station Identification: A Cultural History of New York’s Yiddish Radi 
  • Rona Sheramy, Brandeis University Defining Lessons: Creating Jewish Memory of the Holocaust across the Generations
  • Lila Corwin Berman (Honorable Mention), Yale University Presenting Jews: Jewishness and America, 1920-1960 
  • Shana Bernstein, Stanford University Building Bridges at Home in a Time of Global Conflict: Interracial Cooperation and the Fight for the Civil Rights in Los Angeles, 1933-1954
  • Lisa Silberman Brenner (Honorable Mention), Columbia University The Jazz Singer’s Legacy: The Racial Role-Play of African-American and Jews in Twentieth Century American Performance
  • Susan Gittleman (Honorable Mention), Temple University The German Jewish Experience in America, for a biography of Edna Ferber

 

  • Beth Cohen, Clark University Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in America, 1946-1954
  • Susan Breitzer (Honorable Mention), University of Iowa Class, Ethnicity, and Community: The Jewish Working Class of Chicago, 1886-1928
  • Shana Bernstein (Honorable Mention), Stanford University Building Bridges at Home in a Time of Global Conflict: Interracial Cooperation and the Fight for Civil Rights in Los Angeles, 1933-1954
  • Alexander Molot (Honorable Mention), New York University Between Reform Judaism and Jewish Nationalism: David Neumark and the Problematics of Modern Jewish Identity
  • Arlene Lazarowitz (Honorable Mention), University of California Senator Jacob K. Javits and Soviet Jewish Emigration 
  • Marc Frey, Temple University The American Soviet Jewry Movement, 1958-1972
  • Libby Garland (Honorable Mention), University of Michigan Migrants, Aliens, Citizens: United States Immigration Policies and the Making of Jewish Americans, 1919-1939
  • Adam Howard (Honorable Mention), University of Florida Return to Zion: Organized American Labor and the Establishment of the State of Israel, 1942- 1948 
  • Lisa Levenstein, University of Wisconsin Poor Jewish Women in Philadelphia, 1920-1960
  • Shuly Rubin Schwartz (Honorable Mention), Jewish Theological Seminary of America Serving the Jewish People: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life
  • Joellyn Wallen Zollman (Honorable Mention), Brandeis University Shopping for a Future: A History of the American Synagogue Gift Shop
  • Lawrence Charap (Honorable Mention), Johns Hopkins University Jewish-Prostestant Interfaith Dialogue in the American Religious Press, 1883-1914
  • Michael Alexander, Yale University Jazz Age Jews
  • Kirsten Fermaglich (Honorable Mention), New York University Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Victims: Â Secular Jews, the Holocaust, and American Intellectual Culture, 1959-1978
  • Andrea Most (Honorable Mention), Brandeis University Cantors and Jazz Singers: Theatre as a Medium of Modernization and Acculturation
  • Tova Perlmutter, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor The Federal Voting Rights Act and Jews in New York City
  • Arthur Kiron (Honorable Mention), Columbia University Sabato Marais: Italian Rabbinic Humanist in Victorian Philadelphia
  • Rakhmiel Peltz (Honorable Mention), Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania Forging the Mainstream of American Jewish History: Children of Immigrants Interpret Their Legacy
  • Mark Frey (Honorable Mention), Temple University A Chorus of Protest from the Free World: The American Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 1957-1963 

1996

  • Marc Dollinger, Pasadena City College, California State University at Northridge Turning Inward, The Transformation of American Liberal Politics from 1946-1980

1995

  • Aviva Ben-Ur, Brandeis University Americanization in a Sephardic Immigrant Community: Two Advice Columns from the New York Ladino Press
  • Alice A. Butler-Smith Eisenhower, the Middle East and the Jews: Imitations of Influence
  • Andrew Harrison, Temple University Mr. Philadelphia: Albert M. Greenfield (1887-1967)
  • Jeff Watson (Honorable Mention), Brandeis University From Parallel Postures to Interface: The Interfaith Movement and Jewish Christian Relations 1917-1933
  • Eli Weinerman (Honorable Mention), Indiana University Philadelphia Jewry and American-Soviet Dialogue over Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union
  • Etan Diamond (Honorable Mention), Carnegie Mellon University The Suburbanization of North American’s Orthodox Jews: Toronto, Ontario, 1940-1990 

Feinstein Center Director and Associate Director