2018 Biennial Scholars’ Conference on American Jewish History National Museum of American Jewish History, 101 South Independence Mall East, Philadelphia, PA, June 17-19, 2018 Schedule of Events SUNDAY, JUNE 17, 2018 9:30am: Walking tour of Historic Jewish Philadelphia Pre-registration required. Children and partners welcome. Please gather no later than 9:20AM on the Southwest corner of 6th and Lombard Streets. 12:00pm – 1:00pm: LUNCH & WELCOME, 5th Floor 1:00pm – 2:30pm: SESSION I Of Time and American Jews: A Roundtable Discussion on Periodization and Teaching American Jewish History, Roundtable, Dell Theater Zev Eleff (Hebrew Theological College), chair Eli Lederhendler (Hebrew University) Laura Leibman (Reed College) Deborah Dash Moore (University of Michigan) Jonathan Sarna (Brandeis University) Scholars, Activists, and Their Historical Frameworks: A Conversation, Roundtable, 3rd Floor Gallery Karla Goldman (University of Michigan), chair Sarah Anne Minkin (Independent Scholar) Lex Rofeberg (co-host, Judaism Unbound) Zoe Rudow (Habeas Corpus Resource Center) Transnational Connections, Boardroom Dana Herman (American Jewish Archives), chair Noa Hazan (Independent Scholar), “The Hadassah Organization on Display” Geoffrey Levin (New York University), “(Critic)al Encounters: The American Council for Judaism Goes to the Middle East” Constance Pâris De Bollardière (The American University of Paris), “Studying the Americanization of Bundist Immigrants via their Transnational Relations” Gil Ribak (University of Arizona), “Israelis Are from Mars, American Jews Are from Venus? Moving beyond Binary Formulations of American Jewish-Israeli Relations” Expansively Jewish: Religion and American Jewish Cultures at the Seams of Knowledge and Performance, Classroom Laura Levitt (Temple University), chair Jodi Eichler-Levine (Lehigh University), “From Pomegranates to Pussyhats: On Studying Craft, Creativity, and American Jews” Cara Rock-Singer (Cornell University), “Stretch Marks: American Jewish Midwives and the Making of New Paradigms in American Jewish History” Benjamin Rolsky (Independent Scholar), “Left-Wing Patriotism Meets the Variety Show: I Love Liberty and the Fight to Reclaim the American Flag” 2:45pm-4:15pm: PLENARY Beyond Identity Politics, Dell Theater Beth S. Wenger (University of Pennsylvania), chair Jonathan Boyarin (Cornell University) Ari Kelman (Stanford University) Judith Weisenfeld (Princeton University) Tisa Wenger (Yale University) 4:15pm-4:30pm: COFFEE BREAK, Atrium, Ground Floor 4:30pm-6:00pm: SESSION II New Perspectives on Jewish Food, Boardroom Katie Leonard Turner (Rowan University), chair Max Modiano Daniel, (UCLA) “Past and Present, Exotic and Domestic: Foodways, Cookbooks, and the Shaping of a Sephardic American Community” Roger Horowitz (Hagley Museum and Library and the University of Delaware), “Conceptualizing Kosher as a Brand” Nora Rubel (University of Rochester), “‘Gefilte Fish Can Be the Next Sushi’: Jewish American 21st Century Inventions and Aspirations” New Research on US Immigration and Refugees, Third Floor Gallery Libby Garland (Kingsborough Community College), chair Laurel Leff (Northeastern), “The Quotas Made Them Do It: Assessing Historians’ Explanations for Pre-World War II U.S. Immigration Policy” Rafael Medoff (David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies), “Getting Around the Quotas: Legal Exceptions to U.S. Immigration Restrictions, in the 1930s and Today” Bat-Ami Zucker (Bar-Ilan University), “Women Confront the State Department on 1930s Immigration Policy: The Mission of Frances Perkins and Cecilia Razovsky” New Visions for the Study of American Jews: North American Religions Revisited, Roundtable, Dell Theater Deborah Dash Moore (University of Michigan), chair Kirsten Fermaglich (Michigan State, and coeditor, American Jewish History) Philip Goff (Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, and coeditor, Religion and American Culture); Laura Levitt (Temple University,and coeditor, Religion and American Culture) Adam Mendelsohn (University of Cape Town, and and coeditor, American Jewish History) Daniel Soyer (Fordham University, and and coeditor, American Jewish History) Judith Weisenfeld (Princeton University, and and coeditor, Religion and American Culture) Fracturing Literary Paradigms: New Scholarship on Jewish Women Writers, Classroom Kathryn Hellerstein (University of Pennsylvania), chair Rachel Gordan (University of Florida), “Reclaiming the Middlebrow: Laura Z. Hobson as an American Jewish Writer” Lori Harrison-Kahan (Boston College), “Beyond the Ghetto: Emma Wolf’s Heirs of Yesterday and Jewish Literary History” Jonathan Sarna (Brandeis University), “The Forgetting of Cora Wilburn” Sasha Senderovich (University of Washington), “Anya Ulinich’s Magic Barrel: The ‘Soviet Jew’ for the 21st Century” 6:00pm-7:15pm: DINNER AND PRESENTATION OF LEE MAX FRIEDMAN AWARD, 5th Floor 7:30pm-9:00pm: EVENING PROGRAM, Dell Theater Jews and Journalism in an Age of Fracture Open to the public, tickets available at nmajh.org and included with registration to the conference Ari Goldman (Columbia University), moderator; Yoni Appelbaum (Atlantic); Dahlia Lithwick (Slate); Jennifer Rubin (Washington Post) MONDAY, JUNE 18, 2018 8:00am-9:00am: BREAKFAST, 5th Floor 9:00am-10:30am: SESSION III Rethinking Race and Antisemitism, Boardroom Tony Michels (University of Wisconsin), chair Dory Fox (University of Michigan), “‘American Jews’ Emergent Genetic Narratives” Eric Morgenson (SUNY Albany), “Our Podhoretz Problem: American Jewish Responses to ‘My Negro Problem-and Ours’” Zohar Segev (University of Haifa), “Memory, History, and Reconsideration: The Bombing of Auschwitz in the Light of New Documents” Britt Tevis (Deakin Law School), “‘No Hebrews, No Dogs’: Jews, Civil Rights, and Early Twentieth-Century Antisemitism” Nina Valbousquet (Center for Jewish History), “Entangled Prejudices: Christian Antisemitism in the US and the Responses of the American Jewish Committee (1918-1948)” Dissent in American Zionism and Israel Engagement, Dell Theater Ian Lustick (University of Pennsylvania), chair Judah Bernstein (Center for Jewish History), “The Schism that Wasn’t: ZOA, AJLI, and American Zionism in the 1950s” Noam Pianko (University of Washington), “New Perspective on Israel and Dissent, 1967-1977” Mira Sucharov (Carleton University), “Israel Engagement Paradigms in ‘Dissenting’ Jewish Organizations” Moving Jewish History: Engaging Jewish American Identities and Histories Through Dance, Classroom Josh Perelman (National Museum of American Jewish History), chair Naomi Jackson (Arizona State University), “Embodying Conflict Through Dance and the Making of Modern Jewish Male Subjectivity” Hannah Kosstrin (Ohio State University), “Who Gets to Choreograph Jewishness? Yemenite Jewish Dancers in the United States” Rebecca Rossen (University of Texas at Austin), “Transmitting the Holocaust: Transcultural History and Racial Trauma in Contemporary Dances by African American Artists” 10:45am-12:15pm: PLENARY Beyond American Jewish Exceptionalism, Dell Theater Lila Corwin Berman (Temple University), chair Lital Levy (Princeton University) Tony Michels (University of Wisconsin) David Myers (University of California, Los Angeles, and the Center for Jewish History); Harvey Neptune (Temple University) 12:15pm-1:30pm: LUNCH, 5th Floor A Taste of the AJHS Collection Annie Polland (Executive Director, AJHS) 1:45pm-3:45pm: SESSION IV Rethinking the Social Scientific Study of American Jews, Roundtable, Dell Theater Arnold Dashefsky (University of Connecticut), chair Becka Alper (Pew Research Center) Dianne Ashton (Rowan University) Alan Cooperman (Pew Research Center) Harriet Hartman (Rowan University) Bethamie Horowitz (New York University) Lawrence Kotler-Berkowitz (The Jewish Federations of North America) Ira Sheskin (University of Miami) Workshop: New Media: The Podcast, 2nd Floor Gallery Daniel Libenson (co-host, Judaism Unbound) Lex Rofeberg (co-host, Judaism Unbound) Pre-registration suggested. Email [email protected] to register. Workshop: Getting Started with Digital Humanities: Building a Dataset, Boardroom Rachel Deblinger (UC Santa Cruz) Pre-registration suggested. Email [email protected] to register. Rethinking the Archive, Classroom Annie Polland (American Jewish Historical Society), chair Laura Newman Eckstein (University of Pennsylvania) Jayne Guberman (Jewish Counterculture Oral History Project) Susan Woodland (American Jewish Historical Society) 3:45pm-4:15pm: COFFEE BREAK, Atrium, Ground Floor\ 4:30pm-6:30pm: SESSION V Early American Jews: Reconsidering the Paradigms of Early American Jewish Historiography, Boardroom Adam Mendelsohn (University of Capetown), chair Michael Hoberman (Fitchburg State University), “Colonial Revival in the Immigrant City: The Invention of Jewish American Urban History, 1870-1910” Laura Leibman (Reed College), “The Absent Voice: What Early American Jewish Women Can Teach Us About Historiography” Brian Ogren (Rice University), “Rethinking Boundaries: The Flow of Jewish Ideas in Puritan America”; Hilit Surowitz-Israel (Rutgers University), “‘What if Jews are “Southerners?’ Reimagining Jewish Historiography from the American ‘South’” After Multiculturalism, Beyond “Is It Good for the Jews?”, Roundtable, Dell Theater Benjamin Schreier (Penn State), chair Dean Franco (Wake Forest) Jennifer Glaser (University of Cincinnati) Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth College) Sarah Imhoff (Indiana University) Vincent Lloyd (Villanova University) Shaul Magid (Indiana University)