Bio
Dr. Beth S. Wenger, PhD, is Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where she served as Chair of the History Department for six years. She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and serves as Distinguished Lecturer for the OAH (Organization of American Historians) as well as for the Association for Jewish Studies. In 2008, she received the Richard S. Dunn Award for Distinguished Teaching.
A specialist in American Jewish history, Wenger’s interests also include European Jewish culture, American religion and ethnicity, and cultural, social and gender history.
Wenger currently serves as Chair of the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History in New York, and is a former Chair of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society, former Co-Chair of the Jewish Women’s Caucus of the Association for Jewish Studies, and former Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She serves on the boards of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society as well as on the academic advisory boards of Penn’s Hebert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and the Jewish Women’s Archive.
Publications
- Gender in Judaism and Islam: Common Lives, Uncommon Heritage (NYU)
- History Lessons: The Creation of American Jewish Heritage (Princeton)
- New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (Syracuse)
- The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America (Doubleday)
- Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections (Indiana University Press)