Wednesday, March 30th, 2022. 4:00 p.m.
Antisemitism, an American tradition, has once again reared its ugly head. Although scholars have long studied the topic, they have overlooked its gendered dimensions. Yet we know that antisemitism propelled Jewish women to take up their pens, picket toy stores, and walk out on their roommates. This lecture explores Jewish women’s encounters with this hatred and asks whether inserting women and gender will reshape the history of American antisemitism.
Event Speaker: Professor Pamela Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University where she directs the Jewish Studies Program and received the university’s highest award, Scholar/Teacher of the Year.
Her books include Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889-1985. A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies and the recipient of the American Jewish Historical Society’s Lee Max Friedman Award for distinguished service, her consulting work for museums includes the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History and the Library of Congress.
Her recent book, America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (W.W. Norton) won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award’s Jewish Book of the Year.
She is currently writing a book about the history of American antisemitism. She has appeared on C-SPAN and PBS and published articles in the Washington Post and The Conversation on this urgent topic.