AJS Women's Caucus

About the AJS Women's Caucus
Women's Caucus Travel Grants
2021 Award Winners
Focus on Gender Equity in Publishing and Research

Founded in 1986, the AJS Women's Caucus supports women in the profession and advances the study of gender within the Association for Jewish Studies and Jewish Studies. The Caucus welcomes people of all gender identities and sexual orientations as members.

The Women's Caucus sponsors sessions on gender, pedagogy, and other professional topics at the yearly AJS conference.

We offer a number of competitive grants such as book subventions, paper prizes, a mentoring program for emerging woman scholars, and travel grants for graduate students.

The Caucus also publishes gender-inclusive and women's studies syllabi in Jewish Studies on its website.

Established at a time when feminist concerns and scholarship on gender were marginalized within the field of Jewish Studies, the Women's Caucus has brought these issues to greater prominence within the Association for Jewish Studies and the larger scholarly community.

Co-chairs: Laura Limonic and Melissa Weininger

For more information, email the Women's Caucus at womenscaucus@associationforjewishstudies.org.

2021 Award Winners

Women’s Caucus Mentorship Award

Anita Norich

Deborash Dash Moore

Women’s Caucus Travel Grants

Thaïs Miller, presenting “From Orange is the New Black to Shiva Baby: Jewish Humor in Women-Led Digital Productions”

Samantha Pickette, presenting “’Allow me to introduce myself, I’m another person in the room’: Rhoda Morgenstern and the Schlemielization of the Young Jewish Woman on Television”

Lelia Stadler, presenting “The Road to Divorce: Between the Argentine State and the Jewish Community, 1919-1947”

Elaine Wilson, presenting “Margins of Meaning: Gendering the Landscape of Struggle in The Zelmenyaners”

Women’s Caucus Prize for Innovative Scholarship in Gender and Jewish Studies

Jordan Katz, for her paper “’For there are no other midwives among them’: Midwifery and Jewish-Christian Encounters in Early Modern Europe”

Cashmere Subvention Grants

Jessica Roda, Beyond the Sheitl: Orthodox Jewish Women and Performances in the Digital Age (under contract with NYU Press)

Kerry Wallach, Rahel Szalit-Marcus, A Jewish Artist in Berlin and Paris

Women’s Caucus News

March 23, 2021 Statement

This year the AJS Women's Caucus is focusing on gender equity in publishing and research. To help draw your attention to this issue, we are sharing a number of recent online pieces, including a series published by Feminist Studies in Religion on “manels,” “manthologies,” and the failure to include women scholars in academic ventures. Many of these pieces have been written by women in Jewish Studies.

See the series by Michal Raucher for Feminist Studies in Religion:

Mara Benjamin “On the Uses of Academic Privilege (@theTable 'Manthologies)"
Feminist Studies in Religion 27 May, 2019  

Michal Raucher “Even the Allies Are Misogynist (@theTable: 'Manthologies')”
Feminist Studies in Religion May 28, 2019

Alison Joseph “It’s Not that Easy: On the Challenges Facing an Editor”
Feminist Studies in Religion May 29, 2019

Sarah Imhoff “404 Women Not Found Error"
Feminist Studies in Religion May 30, 2019

Kecia Ali “No Manthology Is an Island” 
Feminist Studies in Religion June 4, 2019

Susanna Heschel “Women in Jewish Studies: Conversations from the Periphery” 
Feminist Studies in Religion May 31, 2019

and also:

Robert Cargill “The Gender Divide”
Biblical Archeology Society May 24, 2019