Biography
I study histories of migration, gender, racialization, and nation-state formation. My research has primarily focused on modern Jewish identity formation in the United States and Mandate Palestine in the 19th and 20th centuries. My recent studies have increasingly concentrated on urban history and the history of early social work in the Progressive Era (1880-1920).
I am developing a dissertation project on the untold spatial and social history of the relations between Jews—particularly Jewish women—in the Progressive era maternalist Settlement House movement from its rise in 1880 to its demise in the 1930s. Through urban spatial ordering and the management of the body, Jewish settlement houses produced and reproduced Jewish claims to American citizenship, whiteness, property, and propriety and established internal Jewish hierarchies in-line with the racial and gender categories of the state during a critical moment in Jewish and American history. My MA paper used oral histories to explore relations between Jewish women within the Jewish Settlement House of the Council of Jewish Women (CJW) in Seattle, WA. My most recent research project takes a digital history approach to map this “Jewish Settlement House movement.”
I believe history is a powerful tool for connecting me to the needs of my community, understanding relationships to power, and denaturalizing present hierarchies and seemingly “self-apparent” systems of knowledge. I serve UW students and community members, and I welcome requests for insight, support, or advocacy.