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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
Awards
Book Review Editor, Journal of Jewish Identities
Pitt Seed Grant from the Office of the Provost for “Religyinz: Vernacular Religion in Pittsburgh,” (with Benjamin Gordon and Aaron Brenner), 2019-2020
Interim Director, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program, Spring-Summer 2019
Sid and Ruth Lapidus Fellowship, American Jewish Historical Society, 2018
Fellow, Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, 2013-2014
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Faculty Research and Scholarship, for day-long “Conference on Reproductive Health, Access, and Action" (organized with Rachel Kutz-Flamenbaum)
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.