Jenna Weissman Joselit

Jenna Weissman Joselit, the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies &
Professor of History at the George Washington University, specializes in the
history and culture of America’s Jews and in U.S. cultural history from the late 19 th
century through the 1950s. Her work, both within and without the classroom, pays
especially close attention to the relationship between daily life, faith and identity.
JWJ’s books include, most recently, Mordecai M. Kaplan: Restless Soul, a Yale
University Press “Jewish Lives” biography (her first); Set in Stone: America’s
Embrace of the Ten Commandments; A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the
Promise of America; A Parade of Faiths, and The Wonders of America:
Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950, which received the National Jewish Book
Award in History.
A founding member of NYU’s Working Group on Jews, Media and Religion, JWJ
has also been a Senior Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of
American Religion, on whose Academic Advisory Council she sits; a fellow at
Yale University’s Center for Art and Material Culture and the University of
Pennsylvania’s Katz Center for Judaic Studies. Most recently, she has been a
Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress’s John W. Kluge Center.

For the past 25 years or so, JWJ has written a monthly column on American Jewish
culture first for the Forward and then for Tablet. These days, she’s a contributing
writer for the Jewish Review of Books, both its print and Substack editions. Over
the years, her essays have also appeared in Sapir, the New Republic, TNR Online,
Gastronomica, Material Religion and other scholarly publications.