Rachel Kranson

  • Associate Professor and Director of Jewish Studies

Fields

Modern Jewish history, Judaism in America, religion in America, gender and sexuality studies, Holocaust

Teaching

Religion and Sexuality, Holocaust History and Memory, Jews and Judaism in the Modern World, Jews and the City, Gender and Jewish History

University Affiliations

Core faculty member of the Jewish Studies Program and Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies Program

Education & Training

  • PhD, New York University

Representative Publications

“From Woman’s Right to Religious Freedom: The Woman’s League for Conservative Judaism and the Politics of Abortion,” in Devotions and Desires: Histories of Religion and Sexuality in the 20th Century United States, edited by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather White. Chapel Hill, 170-192 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018).

Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2017). Honorable Mention, 2017 First Book Award of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.

“Jewish Youth in the Global 1960s,” special issue of the Journal of Jewish Identities 8.2 (July 2015), coedited with Adriana Brodsky and Beatrice Gurwitz.

“Introduction: Jewish Youth in the 1960s,” coauthored with Adriana Brodsky and Beatrice Gurwitz, Journal of Jewish Identities 8.2 (July 2015).

“To be a Jew on America’s Terms is not to be a Jew at All: The Jewish Counterculture’s Critique of Middle-Class Affluence,” Journal of Jewish Identities 8.2 (July 2015).

A Jewish Feminine Mystique? Jewish Women in the Postwar Era, edited by Hasia Diner, Shira Kohn and Rachel Kranson (Rutgers University Press, 2010). Finalist for the 2010 National Jewish Book Awards Barbara Dobkin Award in Women's Studies.

"'The Gentle Jewish Mother Who Owned a Luxury Resort': Jennie Grossinger and the Jewish Feminine Mystique," in A Jewish Feminine Mystique? Jewish Women in the Postwar Era, edited by Hasia Diner, Shira Kohn and Rachel Kranson (Rutgers University Press, 2010).

"More Bar Than Mitzvah: Anxieties over Bar Mitzvah Celebrations in Postwar America," in Rites of Passage: How Today's Jews Celebrate, Commemorate, Commiserate, edited by Leonard Greenspoon, Studies in Jewish Civilization, v. 21 (Purdue University Press, 2010)

Research Interests

Current Projects

Dr. Kranson is currently working on a book manuscript about American Jewish engagement in the politics of abortion.