AJS Member News

AJS Member News is a forum for sharing the accomplishments of AJS Members.  News will be featured on the AJS homepage, with space for more information below.

Submission Guidelines

We welcome announcements about members' special accomplishments, such as book awards, national fellowships and scholarships, teaching awards, election to national/international academic societies, and new appointments and promotions. Unfortunately, we do not have space to post announcements about publications or conference presentations.

Share Your Accomplishments

AJS Members in the News

Linda J. Borish selected as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Jewish History
Borish will be conducting research for a book project during residency at CJH in mid-May - August 2012 She has also been appointed to Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Academic Advisory Coommittee.
Posted on 2/8/11

Four AJS Members Receive National Jewish Book Awards for 2011, Eight Finalists
Jonathan B. Krasner received the Celebrate 350 Award in American Jewish Studies for his book The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education, published by Brandeis University Press.

Marion A. Kaplan and Deborah Dash Moore received the National Jewish Book Award in Anthologies and Collections for their edited volume, Gender and Jewish History, published by Indiana University Press.

Talya Fishman received the Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award for Scholarship for her book, Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures, published by University of Pennsylvania Press.

Eight other AJS members were recognized as finalists in the following categories:

• Anthologies and Collections (Michah Gottlieb)
• Holocaust (David Shneer)
• Scholarship/Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award (Elisheva Carlebach)
• Sephardic Culture (Julia R. Lieberman)
• Visual Arts (Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, Evelyn M. Cohen)
• Women's Studies (Sonja M. Hedgepeth, Eliyana R. Adler)

For more information, please see http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/2011-national-jewish-book-award-winners.
Posted on 2/3/12

AJS Secretary/Treasurer Jonathan Sarna named 2011 recipient of the American Academy of Religion's Martin E. Marty Public Understanding of Religion Award
AJS Secretary/Treasurer Jonathan Sarna named 2011 recipient of the American Academy of Religion's Martin E. Marty Public Understanding of Religion Award. Brandeis University professor and AJS Executive Committee member Jonathan Sarna honored at the recent Annual Meeting as the recipient of the 2011 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. See press release: http://www.rsnonline.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=807&Itemid=927.
Posted on 12/5/11

Robert Alter named by ACLS as 2013 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecturer
ACLS announces the 2013 Charles Homer Haskins Lecturer: Robert Alter, Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, has written widely on the European novel from the eighteenth century to the present; on contemporary American fiction and modern Hebrew literature; and literary aspects of the Bible. www.acls.org/news/11-21-2011
Posted on 11/22/11

Anne Lapidus Lerner is a Scholar-in-Residence at Hadassah-Brandeis Institute
http://www.brandeis.edu/hbi/about/about_residence.html
Posted on 11/22/11

Brian Horowitz named Fellow at the Frankel Center at the University of Michigan for 2011-2012
Brian Horowitz named Fellow at the Frankel Center at the University of Michigan for 2011-2012.
Posted on 10/25/11

Melissa R. Klapper awarded the Charles DeBenedetti Prize
Melissa R. Klapper, Professor of History at Rowan University, has been awarded the Peace History Society's Charles DeBenedetti Prize for her December 2010 Journal of American History article, "'Those by Whose Side We Have Labored': American Jewish Women and the Peace Movement Between the Wars." This prize is given to the best article on peace history in a two year period.
Posted on 10/3/11

Hasia Diner will be the next president of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society
Hasia Diner will become the next president of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. She had a Guggenheim Fellowship for the year 2010-2011.
Posted on 10/3/11

Keren McGinity becomes a Scholar-in-Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute
http://www.brandeis.edu/hbi/about/about_residence.html
Posted on 9/23/11

Daniel Katz is Silver Fellow at Harvard
Daniel Katz, rabbi in Weiden (Bavaria, Germany) and instructor of liturgical music at the Abraham Geiger College (Berlin), is the Daniel Jeremy Silver Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard in the fall semester 2011. Dr. Katz is a specialist in historical synagogue music. He has written on the relationship between Akdamut and Gregorian Chant, Reform Judaism in Denmark, and synagogal performance practice in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Posted on 9/22/11

Professor Mark S. Smith of New York University elected to the American Academy for Jewish Research
Professor Mark S. Smith of New York University was elected to the American Academy for Jewish Research. This summer he completed his term as President of the Catholic Biblical Association of America.
Posted on 9/21/11

Adriana Brodsky named Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress
More information at http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2011/11-151.html
Posted on 9/21/11

Steven J. Zipperstein elected Chair of the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History
Steven J. Zipperstein of Stanford University was elected Chair of the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History. He succeeds Elisheva Carlebach of Columbia University. Derek Penslar of University of Toronto was elected Co-Chair of the Council.
Posted on 9/21/11

Laura Silver awarded a top prize for religion writing in the U.S.
Laura Silver received second place in the Religion Newswriters Association's 2011 Religion Commentary of the Year category. Her stories used food, film and war memorials to chronicle the modern-day Jewish experience in New York City. http://knish.me/knish-investigator-wins-national-prize/
Posted on 9/21/11

Three Jewish Studies Scholars Named to Royal Society
David Novak, Derek Penslar and Gershon Hundert have been named Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada.
Posted on 9/16/11

Meri-Jane Rochelson, President of Nineteenth Century Studies Association
AJS Modern Jewish Lit Division Director Meri-Jane Rochelson, of Florida International University, completing a second term as President of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association.
Posted on 9/14/11

Nancy Sinkoff awarded fellowship at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies
Nancy Sinkoff has been awarded a fellowship at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies and will be in residence there during the winter term 2012.
Posted on 9/13/11

Professor Benjamin Hary of Emory University named the Winship Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities
Professor Benjamin Hary of Emory University named the Winship Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities. He was also appointed as the new Director of the Program in Linguistics at Emory University.
Posted on: 9/12/11

Shaul Kelner wins American Sociological Association Culture Section Award
Shaul Kelner's "Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage and Israeli Birthright Tourism" (NYU Press, 2010) won an Honorable Mention for the American Sociological Association Culture Section's 2011 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book.
Posted on: 9/12/11