The AJS Dissertation Completion Fellowship encourages the timely completion of doctorates by the most promising graduate students in the field of Jewish Studies. Only students who are in the final stages of writing their dissertations and who display clear evidence of their ability to defend their dissertations by the end of June of the fellowship year are eligible to apply for this program.
Recipients may receive up to $33,000 as well as complimentary registration fees to the 2025 AJS Annual Conference. The AJS Dissertation Completion Fellowships will be awarded based on merit and need. Fellowship recipients must submit evidence of any additional funding, at which point the AJS fellowship amount may be reduced to account for these extra funds. This fellowship will thus serve as a “top-off” award for recipients with additional funding. Recipients without any other funding will be eligible to receive $33,000, the full amount of the award.
Deadline to Apply: November 1, 2024
Questions? Contact Amy Weiss at aweiss@associationforjewishstudies.org
Carrie CiFers
University of Virginia, Department of Religious Studies
“Deciding Dinah: An Investigation in the Narrative Ethics of Genesis 34 and Its Re-Presentation in Jubilees, Josephus’
Judean Antiquities, and Joseph and Aseneth”
Molly Theodora Oringer
UCLA, Department of Anthropology
“Spatial Relations: Post-War Rehabilitation and the Afterlives of Jewish Terrains in Lebanon”
Steven Weiss Samols
University of Southern California, Department of History
“Capturing Difference, Making History: The Photobook as a Jewish Artifact”
Rebekah Van Sant-Clark
University of Oxford, Department of Theology and Religion
“Re-presenting Dislocation: The Poetics of Exile and Wilderness in Ancient Jewish Texts”
Patrick Angiolillo
New York University, Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
“Praying By the Name: Divine Epithets in Ancient Jewish Prayer”
Sarah Greenberg
Cornell University, Department of Government
“‘The Law Is Not in Heaven’: Authority and Covenant in Jewish Political Thought”
Philip Keisman
CUNY Graduate Center, Department of Modern European History
“‘If in a Town With a Post Office, Go to the Local Post Office’: A German-Jewish Mission to Civilize in the Central European Borderlands””
Maggie Carlton
University of Michigan, Department of History
"Mothering the Race: Racial Uplift and Motherhood in Interwar Detroit"
Matthew Dudley
Yale University, Department of History
"Into the Anti-Archive: Jewish Law, Family, and Ottoman Imperial Administration in the Early Modern Cairo Geniza"
Rebekah Haigh
Princeton University, Department of Religion
"Scripting Identity: (En)Gendering Violence in the War Scroll and the Book of Revelation"
Shirelle Doughty
University of California, Berkeley, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures
"Women and Haskalah: Rethinking Women's Role in the Development of Modern Hebrew and
Yiddish Literatures"
Eliav Grossman
Princeton University, Department of Religion
"The New Mishnah: Rabbinic Literature Between Late Antiquity and Early Islam"
Fellowship Recipients
ANNA BAND
University of Chicago, Department of History
“At Home in My Room: Jewish Spaces of Longing and Belonging in World War I through Weimar Berlin”
BENNY BAR-LAVI
University of Chicago, Department of History
“Figures of Godless Immanence: Judaism and Islam in the Christian Political Discourses of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe”
AMANDA SIEGEL
University of California, Berkeley,Department of Comparative Literature
“Jewish-Argentine Literature: Its Origins, Its Others, and Its ‘Afterlives’”
HANNAH ZAVES-GREENE
New York University, Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
“Able to Be American: American Jews and the Public Charge Provision in United States Immigration Policy, 1891–1934”
Honorary Fellows
DANIELLA FARAH
Stanford University, Department of History
“Forming Iranian Jewish Identities: Education, National Belonging, the Jewish Press, and Integration, 1945–1981”
NICOLE FREEMAN
The Ohio State University, Department of History
“Our Children Are Our Future: Child Care, Education, and Rebuilding Jewish Life in Poland after the Holocaust, 1944–1950”
The AJS also recognizes the following finalists:
SAMUEL CATLIN
University of Chicago, Department of Comparative Literature and the Divinity School
“The Rest is Literature: Midrash, Secularism, and the Institution of ‘Theory’”
SAMUEL SHUMAN
University of Michigan, Departments of Anthropology and Judaic Studies
“Cutting Out the Middleman: Displacement and Distrust in the Global Diamond Industry”
SOPHIA SOBKO
University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Education
“Weaponized as White: The Contradictions of White, Soviet Jewish Assimilation in the United States”
DIKLA YOGEV
University of Toronto, Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies and Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies
“Police Legitimacy among the Haredim in Israel”
Alison Curry
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of History
"In the Space of the Dead: Tradition, Identity, and Everyday Life in the Jewish Cemeteries of Poland, 1918–1945"
Omer Shadmi
University of Haifa, Department of Jewish History
"The Imaginary Geography of the Babylonian Talmud and the Production of Babylonia"
Tzipora Weinberg
New York University, Department of Hebrew & Judaic Studies
"Still Small Voices: The Development of Orthodox Thought and Practice by ‘Lithuanian’ Jewish Women,
1921–1945"
Isaac Roszler
New York University, Department of Hebrew & Judaic Studies
"Legal Accretions in the Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud"
Roy Shukrun
McGill University, Department of Jewish Studies and University of Groningen, Department of Middle East Studies
"Moroccan Jewish Transnationalism: Movement and the Emergence of a
Global Diaspora in the 20th Century"
ROBIN BULLER, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Sephardi Immigrants in Paris: Navigating Community, Culture, and Citizenship between France and the Ottoman Empire, 1918–1945”
BAR GUZI, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University
“Insisting on God: Naturalistic Theism in Twentieth-Century American Jewish Thought”
NECHAMA JUNI, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University
“Halakhic Women: Gender, Practice, and Obligation in American Orthodox Judaism”
TAMAR MENASHE, Department of History, Columbia University
“The Imperial Supreme Court and Jews in Cross-Confessional Legal Cultures in Germany, 1495–1690”
CHAYA NOVE, Department of Linguistics, CUNY Graduate Center
“Phonetic Contrast in New York Hasidic Yiddish Vowels”
REBECCA POLLACK, Department of Art History, CUNY Graduate Center
“Contextualizing British Holocaust Memorials and Museums: Form, Content, and Politics”
MIRIAM SCHULZ, Department of Germanic Languages, Columbia University
“Gornisht iz nit fargesn, keyner iz nit fargesn: Soviet Yiddish Culture, the Holocaust, and Networks of Memory, 1941–1991”
BEATA SZYMKOW, Department of History, Stanford University
“The Emergence of Polish Lwow: Violence and State Building in a Multiethnic City, 1918–1939”
MIRIAM-SIMMA WALFISH, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
“Rabbis, Parents, and the Dynamics of Cultural Transmission in the Babylonian World”
MATTHEW BRITTINGHAM, Department of Religion, Emory University
“‘Our Jewish Workingmen May be Proud of Our Torah and of Our Religion’: Jewish Immigrants, Judaism, and the Yiddish Mass-Market (1900–1930)”
PRATIMA GOPALAKRISHNAN, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University
“Domestic Labor and Marital Obligations in the Ancient Jewish Household”
SARA HALPERN, Department of History, The Ohio State University
“‘These Unfortunate People’: The International Humanitarian Response to European Jewish Refugees in Shanghai, 1945–1951”
CHEN MANDEL-EDREI, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Maryland
“Planned Encounters: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Modern Hasidic Narratives—A Historical and Literary Perspective”
ADI NESTER, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Colorado, Boulder
“People of the Book: Biblical Music Dramas and the Hermeneutic Formation of Collectivity”
NOAM SIENNA, Department of History, University of Minnesota
“Making and Reading Jewish Books in North Africa, 1700–1900”
DANIELLE WILLARD-KYLE, Department of History, Rutgers University
“Living in Liminal Spaces: Refugees in Italian Displaced Persons Camps, 1945–1951”
MEIRA WOLKENFELD, Department of Talmud, Yeshiva University
“Scent and Self: The Sense of Smell in the Cultural World of the Babylonian Talmud”
The AJS ALSO RECOGNIZES THE FOLLOWING FINALIST:
C. TOVA MARKENSON, Departments of Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University
“Performing Jewish Femininity: Prostitution and Protest on the Latin American Yiddish Stage (1900–1939)”
AYELET BRINN, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
Miss Amerike: The Yiddish Press’s Encounter with the United States
GEOFFREY LEVIN, Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University
Another Nation: Israel, American Jews, and Palestinian Rights, 1949–1977
DANIEL MAY, Department of Religion, Princeton University
After Zion: Exception, Plurality, and Tragedy in Twentieth Century Jewish Political Thought
MARIS ROWE-MCCULLOCH, Department of History, University of Toronto
The Holocaust in a City under Siege: Occupation, Mass Violence, and Genocide in the Russian City of Rostov-on-Don, 1941–1943
ADRIEN SMITH, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University
The Functions of Yiddish: Jewish Language and Style in the Late Soviet Union, in Comparative Perspective
ALLISON SOMOGYI, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“Mine Was Not Hell, It was Purgatory”: Female Diarists and Jewish Life in Budapest under the Arrow Cross Regime, October 1944–February 1945
M ADRYAEL TONG, Department of Theology, Fordham University
“Given As A Sign”: Circumcision and Bodily Discourse in Late Antique Judaism and Christianity
ALEX WEISBERG, Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University
Before There Was Nature: Land, Ethics, and New Materialism in the Early Rabbinic Sabbatical Year Laws
SHLOMO ZUCKIER, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University
Flesh and Blood: The Reception of Biblical Sacrifice in Selected Talmudic Sources in Comparative Context
The AJS also recognizes the following finalist:
SARAH WOLF, Department of Religious Studies, Northwestern University
The Rabbinic Legal Imagination: Between Praxis and Scholasticism in the Babylonian Talmud
AVIV BEN-OR, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University
The Possibilities of an Arab-Jewish Poetics: A Study of the Arabic and Hebrew Fiction of Shimon Ballas and Sami Michael
SARAH GARIBOVA, Department of History, University of Michigan
Memories for a Blessing: Jewish Mourning Practices and Commemorative Activities in Postwar Belarus and Ukraine, 1945-1991
BRENDAN GOLDMAN, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University
Jews in the Latin Levant: Conquest, Continuity and Adaptation in the Medieval Mediterranean
SONIA GOLLANCE, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania
Harmonious Instability: (Mixed) Dancing and Partner Choice in German-Jewish and Yiddish Literature
SIMCHA GROSS, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University
Empire and Neighbors: Babylonian Rabbinic Identity in Its Imperial and Local Contexts
YAEL LANDMAN, Department of Bible, Yeshiva University
The Biblical Law of Bailment in Its Ancient Near Eastern Contexts
JASON LUSTIG, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles
'A Time to Gather': A History of Jewish Archives in the Twentieth Century
The AJS also recognizes the following finalists:
MAX BAUMGARTEN, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles
From Watts to Rodney King: Peoplehood, Politics, and Citizenship in Jewish Los Angeles, 1965-1992
MARC HERMAN, Department of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Enumeration of the Commandments in the Judeo-Arabic World: Approaches to Medieval Rabbanite Jurisprudence
CONSTANZE KOLBE, Department of History, Indiana University
Trans-Imperial Networks: Jewish Merchant Mobility Across and Beyond the Mediterranean in the Nineteenth Century
JAMES REDFIELD, Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University
The Sages and the World: Categorizing Culture in Early Rabbinic Law
