(Photo Credit: Rosen-Jones Photography)

I am a scholar working at the intersection of Jewish studies, religious studies, and American history. My work has been especially interested in exploring the relationship between religion, space, and place.

My new book, The Jewish South: An American History, was published in 2025 by Princeton University Press. That project received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

My first book, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-century America (New York University Press, 2017), was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies and a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. I am also, with Michael R. Cohen, co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of American Jewish History

I am currently an associate professor of Jewish studies, religion, and history at Oberlin College and chair of the Jewish studies program. I was previously assistant professor of Jewish studies and director of the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture at the College of Charleston. I co-directed the 2019 NEH Summer Institute for College and University Professors, “Privilege and Prejudice: Jewish History in the American South.” 

I serve as vice president (and president-elect) of the Southern Jewish Historical Society. 

I grew up in Shorewood, Wisconsin, and Marietta, Georgia, and earned a B.A. in religion (summa cum laude with distinction) from Boston University. I received a PhD in religious studies from Yale University in 2015.

You can follow me on Facebook.

 

Header image: Jacob Olivera Will (1751), from the South Carolina Wills and Probate Records, accessible on Ancestry.com