Fellowships

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, 2025. 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

2024 Summer Fellowship Award Recipients

The Feinstein Center for American Jewish History is proud to announce the Brown Family Research Award Fellows for 2024:

Aleksandra Jakubczak (Harvard University)

Jakubczak’s project examines the successful and unsuccessful attempts to reestablish familial contact between Jewish immigrants in the United States and their relatives in Eastern Europe between the outbreak of World War One and 1944. Its goal is to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how Jewish immigrants related to their families in Eastern Europe who faced unprecedented difficulties: wars, displacement, and massive unemployment in the interwar period, and how Jews in Eastern Europe utilized transnational connections to improve their situation in a world of shrinking economic and emigration opportunities, growing antisemitism, and, ultimately, the Holocaust.

Shiyong Lu, PhD Candidate in Hebrew and Judaic Studies/History (New York University)

Lu’s research investigates diverse interactions between American Jews and Chinese purveyors of food in the twentieth century. Her current project, “We Offer Chicken Chop Suey on Sundays: The Encounter Between Jews and Chinese Restaurateurs in Chicago, 1910s-1930s,” explores how Chinese restaurateurs in Chicago visioned and established a Jewish clientele through long-term advertising campaigns in the Chicago Jewish press from 1910s to 1930s. This project aims to reveal the active role played by Chinese restaurateurs in forming the deep-rooted attachment of American Jews to Chinese food, and the interconnectedness between the two communities that evolved from food.

Jacob Morrow-Spitzer, PhD Candidate in History (Yale University)

Between the fall of slavery in the 1860s and the rise of the modern liberal state in the 1930s, the notion of what it meant to be a “good citizen” radically transformed for Jews in the United States. Morrow-Spitzer’s dissertation, “Jewish Citizenship Politics in the Age of American State Transformation, 1850-1933,” argues that a group of “American Jewish citizenship reformers” emerged during this era, all of whom placed the future of Jewish citizenship at the heart of their intellectual and political projects. As both the power of the regulatory state and the size of America’s Jewish population grew in previously unimaginable ways, these Jewish leaders consistently debated, theorized, and lobbied on behalf of what constituted an unthreatening and upwardly mobile modern Jewish citizen.

Past Fellows 1994-2002

Jake Beckert, University of Washington Seattle, “Profit in the Holy Land: American Capital and Development in Mandatory Palestine”
Mimi Wooten, University of Michigan, “Rubin Morris Hanan’s ‘Freedom Tree’: Narrating Immigration After 1924”
Alexandra Zborovsky, University of Pennsylvania, “Should I Stay or Should I Go: Late Twentieth Century Jewish Immigration from the USSR to the United States”

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

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

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

Special Awards Granted

2001

Eric Goldstein (Dissertation Fellowship), Emory University, Race and the Dilemmas of Jewish Identity, 1875-1945

2000

Edward Shapiro (Research Grant), Seton Hall University, Right Turn: Jews and the American Conservative Movement
Eugene Sheppard (Research Grant), Brandeis University, Analysis of Leo Strauss’ philosophy and work post-World War II at the University of Chicago
Nathan Abrams (Research Grant), University of London, The special role played by Commentary magazine in Jewish affairs, especially on the growth of American Jewish political conservatism

1998

Marc Dollinger (Doctoral Prize), Pasadena City College, Turning Inward: Cultural Nationalism and American Jewish Life, 1964-1980
Karla Goldman (Doctoral Prize), Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute for Religion, Beyond the Gallery: The Place of Women in the Development of American Judaism
Mary McCune (Special Grant in Women’s Studies), Ohio State University, “Charity Work” as Nation-Building: American Jewish Women’s Activism and the Crises in Europe and Palestine, 1914-1929
Felicia Herman (Special Grant in Women’s Studies), Brandeis University, The ways gender has shaped the religious lives of American Jewish women and men from the 1890’s to World War II.
Jane Rothstein (Special Grant in Women’s Studies), New York University, Social and cultural history of the mikveh in the United States from the late nineteenth century through the 1940’s.
Jeremy Stolow (Special Grant in Women’s Studies), York University, Toronto, Canada, Nation of Torah: Inspiring Stories and the Politics of Historiography in a Religious Social Movement
Aviva Ben-Ur (Special Grant in Women’s Studies), Brandeis University, Queens University, Where Diasporas Met: Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews in the City of New York - A Study in Intra- Ethnic Relations, 1880-1950
Melissa Klapper (Special Grant in Women’s Studies), Rutgers University, A Fair Portion of the World’s Knowledge: Young American Jewish Women and the Problem of Education, 1870-1920

1997

Nancy Mykoff, A Jewish Season: Ethnic-American Culture at Children’s Summer Camp (1918-1941)
Jay Eidelman (Research Grant), Yale University, Jews in North America, 1790-1830
Regina Stein, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

1995

Reena Sigman Friedman (Research Grant), Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, History of the Reconstructionist Movement
Eli Faber (Research Grant), John Jay Criminal College, Jews and Slavery in the English Speaking World
Alice Saldan (Research Grant), University of Kansas, Eisenhower, American Middle East Policy, and Domestic Imperatives: American Zionism Confronts “Sympathetic Impartiality”

1993

Beth Wenger (Doctoral Prize), University of Pennsylvania, New York Jews and The Great Depression

Feinstein Center Director and Associate Director

College of Liberal Arts
History
Professor
Programs
Jewish Studies
Director
Programs
Feinstein Center for American Jewish History

Lila Corwin Berman

Office Location

Gladfelter Hall, 916

College of Liberal Arts
Associate Director
Programs
Feinstein Center for American Jewish History

Ariella Werden-Greenfield

Office Location

Gladfelter Hall, 947

Please fill out the form and we will respond to your inquiry.

Feinstein Center for American Jewish History

2024 Summer Fellowship Award Recipients

Past Fellows 1994-2002

Feinstein Center Director and Associate Director

Lila Corwin Berman

College of Liberal Arts

History

Professor

Director

Ariella Werden-Greenfield

College of Liberal Arts

Associate Director

Go back to ResearchMore in Feinstein Center for American Jewish History

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