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Karla Goldman
Sol Drachler Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work, and Professor of Judaic Studies, College of LS&A
Karla Goldman's research focuses on the history of the American Jewish experience with special attention to the history of American Jewish communities and the evolving roles and contributions of American Jewish women. She directs the University of Michigan Jewish Communal Leadership Program, a collaborative effort between the School of Social Work and the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies.
Goldman previously taught at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati and was historian in residence at the Jewish Women’s Archive in Brookline, Massachusetts. She is the author of Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism (Harvard Univeristy Press).
Research Interests/Focus
American Jewish women, American Judaism, Hurricane Katrina, Jewish identity, Jewish women, Jews in universities, University of Michigan, Jewish urban experience
Contact Information
| Phone | Room | Address | |
|---|---|---|---|
| kargold@umich.edu |
Education
| Year | Degree | School | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | PhD | Am. History | Harvard University, Cambridge, MA |
| 1986 | MA | Am. History | Harvard University, Cambridge, MA |
| 1982 | BA | History | Yale University, New Haven, CT |
News
| Year | Description |
|---|---|
| 2022 | Goldman, K. (2022, January) “American Israelites: Cincinnati and the Shaping of Jewish Community in the United States,” Mercantile Library, Cincinnati, OH |
| 2022 | Goldman, K. (2022, December) “Milestone Anniversaries for Jewish Women: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ordination of Sally Priesand,” Association for Jewish Studies conference, Boston, MA |
| 2022 | Panelist, “Faith and Feminism: Changing Roles of Women in American Judaism and Malaysian Islam,” Frankel Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI |
| 2022 | Goldman, K. (2022, May) “’Cincinnati’s Best Citizens’: Queen City Jews and the Path from Immigrant Aid to Civic Leadership, 1881-1930,” American Jewish Historical Society Biennial Scholars’ Conference, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA |
| 2022 | Goldman, K. (2022, January) “Cincinnati Synagogues: Claiming Space in the Expanding City,” University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH |
| 2021 | Goldman, K. (2021, December) “’All Races and Creeds’ or ‘Belonging to our Persuasian?” Shifting Currents in the History of the Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati,” Association for Jewish Studies conference, Chicago, IL |
| 2021 | Goldman, K. (2021, December) “American Jewish Women and Volunteerism: Gender, Unpaid Labor, Activism, and Community in the Twentieth Century,” chair and respondent, Association for Jewish Studies conference, Chicago, IL |
| 2020 | Goldman, K. (2020, December) “’Good Riddance of Bad Rubbish’: Jewish Student Radicals and Institutional Antisemitism at the University of Michigan in the 1930s,” Association for Jewish Studies Conference (virtual). |
| 2018 | Antisemitism Today Roundtable |
| 2012 | Goldman, K. (2011, June). Gathering the storm: Exploring Katrina's Jewish voices and the significance of oral history collection. Session organizer and presenter at the American Librarians Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA. |
| 2012 | Goldman, K. (2012, March). Quantified bodies of knowledge in contemporary Jewry. Respondent at The Social Life of Jewish Numbers conference, Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. |
| 2012 | Goldman, K. (2012, February). Where the particular encounters the universal: The Civil Rights Movement in museum education. Moderator and session co-chair at the Council of American Jewish Museums annual conference, Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI. |
| 2012 | Goldman, K. (2012, February). Gender, decorum, and aesthetics in the making of the American synagogue. Conference on Surveying Sacred Space, Pepperdine University. Malibu, CA. |
| 2010 | Goldman, K. (2010, December). New perspectives on Jewish women and the feminist revolution, chair and respondent. Association for Jewish Studies conference, Boston, MA. |
| 2008 | Goldman, K. (2008, June). Making trouble: funny Jewish women and the cultural costs of comedy. National Women's Studies Association annual conference. Cincinnati, OH. |
| 2008 | Goldman, K. (2008, June). Exploring Katrina’s Jewish voices. Presented at the Scholars’ Conference on American Jewish History, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, CA. |
| 2008 | Goldman, K. (2008, June). Making trouble: Funny Jewish women and the the cultural costs of comedy. Presented at the National Women’s Studies Association annual conference, Cincinnati, OH. |
| 2007 | Goldman, K. (2007, February). Cincinnati’s Jewish women and the reshaping of community. Presented at the Conference on A Jewish Feminine Mystique? Jewish Women in Postwar America, New York University, New York, NY. |
| 2007 | Goldman, K. (2007, April). Democratizing history on-line. Presented at the American Association for History and Computing Annual Meeting, Brown University, Providence, RI. |
| 2007 | Goldman, K. (2007, November). Hurricane Katrina: Historical themes and memories. Keynote presented at the Southern Jewish Historical Society, Washington, D.C. |
| 2007 | Goldman, K. (2007, December). Running against the mainstream: The anomaly of the American Jewish center. Presented at the International Conference on Contemporary Reform Judaism: Sociology, Education and Theology, The Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, Israel. |
| 2006 | Goldman, K. (2006, June). The Jewish woman in America after thirty years (round-table panelist). Presented at the Biennial Scholars’ Conference on American Jewish History, Charleston, SC. |
| 2006 | Goldman, K. (2006, November). Voices of moderation: Jewish women and the Civil Rights Movement (commentator). Presented at the Southern Jewish Historical Society Conference, Little Rock, AR. |
| 2006 | Goldman, K. (2006, December). Public faith and private virtue: Cincinnati’s American Israelites. Presented at the Association of Jewish Studies conference, San Diego, CA. |
| 2005 | Goldman, K. (2005, May). America paves the way for Jewish women. Presented at the Conference on 350 Years of American Jewry, 1654-2004: Transcending the European Experience? Tutzing, Bavaria. |
| 2005 | Goldman, K. (2005, November). Regionalism: Assessing its impact on American Jewish life. Presented at the Southern Jewish Historical Society Conference, Baltimore, MA. |
| 2005 | Goldman, K. (2005, December). When American history is Jewish women’s history. Presented at the Assocation for Jewish Studies conference, Washington, DC. |
| 2004 | Goldman, K. (2004, March). Gateways to the Lord: When synagogues become black churches. Presented at the Conference on Architecture, Urbanism and the Jewish Subject, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA. |
| 2004 | Goldman, K. (2004, March). The emergence of the Jewess: Negotiating white Christian civilization in the 1890s. Presented at the Conference on Imagining American Jewish Community, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, NY. |
| 2004 | Goldman, K. (2004, June). Along with all other Americans: The 1954 tercentenary celebration of American Jewish history and life. Presented at the Biennial Scholars Conference on American Jewish History, American University, Washington, D.C. |
| 2004 | Goldman, K. (2004, November). Under Freedom: The 1954 American Jewish tercentenary’s embrace of America. Presented at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. |
| 2004 | Goldman, K. (2004, December). Radical insiders: The challenge of women’s activism within American Judaism. Presented at the Conference on Radical Women, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. |
| 2003 | Goldman, K. (2003, May). Women in Reform Judaism: Between religion and respectability, rhetoric and reality. Presented at the Conference on the Changing Role of Women in American Jewish Life, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. |
| 2003 | Goldman, K. (2003, October). The path to "Americanization": Women and the restructuring of American Judaism. Presented at the Conference on Women and American Religion: Reimagining the Past, University of Chicago Divinity School, Chicago, IL. |
| 2003 | Goldman, K. (2003, December). Along with all other Americans: The 1954 celebration of 300 years of American Jewish life. Presented at the Modern Jewish Studies Colloquium, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. |
| 2002 | Goldman, K. (2000, December). The civic identity of Cincinnati’s Jews. Presented at the Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, MA. |
| 2002 | Goldman, K. (2002, January). Beyond the synagogue gallery: Men, women and the reframing of American Judaism. Presented at the Charles P. Scott Symposium on Women in Religion, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT. |
| 2002 | Goldman, K. (2002, April). Weaving Jewish women’s lives on the web. Presented at the Organization of American Historians, Washington D.C. |
| 2002 | Goldman, K. (2002, June). Jewish women’s lives on the web. Presented at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. |
| 2002 | Goldman, K. (2002, June). The synagogues of nineteenth-century American Jews: Reexamining "Americanization". Presented at the Fifth Scholars’ Conference on American Jewish History, Albany University, Albany, NY. |
| 2002 | Goldman, K. (2002, November). African Americans and Jews in America, 1945-the present: A complex relationship in a complex world. Presented at Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH. |
| 2002 | Goldman, K. (2002, December). The view from 1954: Celebrating 300 years of American Jewish life. Presented at the Association for Jewish Studies, Los Angeles, CA. |
| 2001 | Goldman, K. (2001, October). Women and American Reform Judaism: Rhetoric and reality. Presented at the Klutznick-Harris Symposium, Lincoln, NE. |
| 2000 | Goldman, K. (2000, October). Gateways to the Lord: The legacy of synagogue buildings for African-American churches. Presented at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at Yale seminar, Yale University, New Haven, CT. |
| 2000 | Goldman, K. (2000, October). Patterns of philanthropy: Nineteenth-century women's societies in Germany and the United States. Presented at the Conference on German-Jewish Identities in America: From the Civil War to the Present, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI. |
| 2000 | Goldman, K. (2000, November). Women's societies in nineteenth-century southern Jewish communities. Presented at the Meeting of Southern Jewish Historical Society, Cincinnati, OH. |
| 1999 | Goldman, K. (1999, February). A house divided? Building cultural contexts (respondent). Presented at the School of Architecture and Interior Design, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH. |
| 1999 | Goldman, K. (1999, June). Uncovering hidden identities, reading against the grain; American Jewish women and the art of self-fashioning (commentator). Presented at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. |
| 1999 | Goldman, K. (1999, June). The historical context of racial reconciliation. Presented at The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Symposium on Racial Reconciliation, University of Cincinnati School of Law, Cincinnati, OH. |
| 1998 | Goldman, K. (1998, March). The public religious lives of Cincinnati’s Jewish women. Presented at Consultation on the Religious Lives of American Jewish Women, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. |
| 1998 | Goldman, K. (1998, April). Houses for body and soul: Synagogues, churches, and the construction of American religiosity. Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Indianapolis, IN. |
| 1998 | Goldman, K. (1998, May). Judaism, Religion in the news. Presented at the Poynter Center, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. |
| 1998 | Goldman, K. (1998, December). Women and nineteenth-century Judaism: A comparative inquiry. Presented at the Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, MA. |
| 1997 | Goldman, K. (1997, April). Gender and the reform of American Judaism. Presented at Secular and Religious Reform Movements in American History, Middelburg Conference of European Historians of the United States, Middelburg, Netherlands. |
| 1997 | Goldman, K. (1997, August). Reform, gender, and the boundaries of American Judaism in the late nineteenth century. Presented at the World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem. |
| 1997 | Goldman, K. (1997, October). Americanizing sacred space: The gendered transformation of the synagogue. Presented at Making Sacred Spaces, the Sixth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Built Form & Culture Research, Cincinnati, OH. |
| 1996 | Goldman, K. (1996, March). Women and Judaism. Presented at the Symposium on Saving Grace: Celebrating the Spirituality of American Women, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN. |
| 1996 | Goldman, K. (1996, May). The gendered transformation of the American Synagogue. Presented at the Colloquium on Mediating Spaces: American Religion and Place, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. |
| 1996 | Goldman, K. (1996, June). To drink directly from the fountain of religion: The question of women's membership in the nineteenth-century American synagogue. Presented at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. |
| 1996 | Goldman, K. (1996, June). From "hen coop" to family pew. Presented at the Second Scholars Conference on American Jewish History, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, NY. |
| 1995 | Goldman, K. (1995, January). In search of an American Judaism: Rivalry and reform in the growth of two Cincinnati synagogues. Presented at the American Society of Church History meeting, Chicago, IL. |
| 1995 | Goldman, K. (1995, April). The place of women in American Judaism. Presented at the American Jewish Historical Society/Brandeis University Joint Seminar, Waltham, MA. |
| 1995 | Goldman, K. (1995, December). The struggle for authority in the creation of community: Tradition and change in Cincinnati, 1840-1869. Presented at the Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, MA. |
| 1994 | Goldman, K. (1994, June). Racial thinking and Jewish philanthropy in the late nineteenth century. Presented at the Scholars Conference on Jewish American History and Life, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. |
| 1993 | Goldman, K. (1993, April). Women in the American Reform Temple of the 1890's. Presented at the Gender and Judaism Conference, Columbus, Ohio. |
| 1993 | Goldman, K. (1993, June). Ambivalent benevolence: Female Jewish philanthropy and the immigrant Jew. Presented at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY. |
| 1993 | Goldman, K. (1993, October). The emergence of women in the American synagogue. Presented at Crossing Boundaries: Women in American Jewish History Conference, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. |
| 1992 | Goldman, K. (1992, April). Women and nineteenth-century American Judaism. Presented at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY. |
| 1991 | Goldman, K. (1991, December). Beyond the gallery: Women and the American reinvention of the synagogue. Presented at the Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, MA. |
| 1990 | Goldman, K. (1990, November). Women's rights in conflict with the prayers: Women in the emergence of the American synagogue. Presented at Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio. |
| 1989 | Goldman, K. (1989, December). Kaufmann Kohler and the ideal Jewish woman. Presented at the Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, MA. |
Jewish Communal Leadership Program
The University of Michigan's Jewish Communal Leadership Program (JCLP) offers a distinctive educational opportunity for emerging leaders committed to helping Jewish communities meet 21st-century challenges while also addressing broader social concerns.