About the AJS Women's Caucus
Nominate Board Members
AJS Women's Caucus Award for Mentorship
2025 Cashmere Subvention Award in Jewish Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
2025 Prize for Innovative Scholarship in Gender and Jewish Studies
Focus on Gender Equity in Publishing and Research
Founded in 1986, the AJS Women's Caucus supports women and all marginalized genders in the profession and advances the study of gender and intersectionality within the Association for Jewish Studies and Jewish Studies. The Caucus welcomes people of all marginalized genders including women, trans people, non-binary people, intersex people, genderqueer people, and gender questioning people, and sexual orientations as members.
The Women's Caucus sponsors sessions on gender, pedagogy, and other professional topics at the annual 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 Women's Caucus holds an annual conference breakfast-time meeting, usually on Monday morning of the conference. Here, graduate students, independent scholars, contingent scholars, and junior and senior scholars meet, network, and share recently published work in gender as well as information on relevant conferences and fellowships.
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.
Cochairs: Jenny Caplan and Jennifer Thompson
For more information, email the Women's Caucus at genderjusticecaucus@associationforjewishstudies.org.
Deadline: December 10
The Women’s Caucus is seeking nominees for members of its board of directors. Terms are three years long, January 2026 – December 2028, with possibility for renewal. Nominees must be members in good standing of AJS and the Women’s Caucus. Those who are not currently Caucus members can join when renewing AJS dues.
Board members’ responsibilities include participating in board meetings and general Caucus meetings, serving on award committees, and contributing to other Caucus activities. The Board meets once per year in person at the annual AJS meeting and throughout the year on Zoom on an as-needed basis.
If you are interested in serving, please send a paragraph introducing yourself, your work, and your interest in working with the Women’s Caucus, along with your CV, to co-chairs Jennifer Thompson and Jenny Caplan at genderjusticecaucus@associationforjewishstudies.org.
Jenny and Jen will be available at the AJS annual meeting this December to answer questions about board membership. They can be reached at jthompson@csun.edu and caplanjr@ucmail.uc.edu.
The election will be held the second week in January, and we hope to notify new members of their election later in the month.
If you need additional time to submit your nomination, please reach out to co-chairs Jennifer Thompson and Jenny Caplan at genderjusticecaucus@associationforjewishstudies.org.
The deadline to submit a nomination has passed.
Mentorship is a cornerstone of the Women’s Caucus. From championing gender equity in publishing to advising early career scholars, the Caucus recognizes that advancing gender justice does not happen in vacuum. Since 2018, the Caucus has offered an award for outstanding service in the profession through mentorship in Jewish Studies. This award underscores the continued gendered nature of this labor which mentors have undertaken, in addition to their regular professional and personal duties.
Nomination Process: To submit a nomination, you (and co-signers) must be members in good standing of the Women’s Caucus with dues paid for 2025. Nominees do not have to be members.
Please submit a 1–2 page letter describing the nominee’s significant contributions to the professional success of members of groups historically disadvantaged on the basis of gender in Jewish Studies. Previous successful nominations have described the nominee’s formal and informal mentoring efforts, emotional support, and innovative scholarship in their field.
The following avenues for nominations are encouraged;
1) Only one letter is needed per nominee, and multiple co-signers
2) Revised and strengthened letters that were previously unsuccessful
3) First-time nominees4) Writers and nominees inside and outside of the United States
Nomination documents should be electronically submitted as email attachments to genderjusticecaucus@associationforjewishstudies.org. The Award for Mentorship Committee will notify the winner prior to the conference, and they will be honored at the Women’s Caucus breakfast.
Deadline: November 15, 2025
Previous winners include:
2018: Marsha Rosenblitt and Fran Malino
2019: Laura Levitt
2020: Judith Baskin and Sarah Horowitz
2021: Deborah Dash Moore and Anita Norich
2022: Marion Kaplan
2023: Laura Leibman
2024: Elisheva Carlebach
Melissa R. Klapper, Professor of History and Director of Women's & Gender Studies, Rowan University
Tamar Menashe, Jay and Leslie Cohen Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Department of History, Emory University
Jacob Evoy, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, University of Western Ontario
Jeremiah Lockwood, Visiting Professor, Borns Jewish Studies Program, Indiana University
Lilly Maier, PhD Candidate, University of Munich
Honorable Mention
Maayan Aner, St. Peter College, Oxford University
Tanya Zion-Waldoks, Assistant Professor, Seymour Fox School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
To help draw attention to this issue, we are sharing a number of 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
