Jews Across the Americas, 1492-present

Learning and Teaching Jewish American History

Jews Across the Americas, 1492-present

Mir Yarfitz

Mir Yarfitz is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Director of Jewish Studies at Wake Forest University. He is the author of Impure Migration: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019), and articles in Hispanic American Historical Review, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Women in Judaism, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, and The New Jewish Argentina. He has also written collaboratively on collaborative pedagogy in Exploring Inclusive & Equitable Pedagogies: Creating Space for All Learners, edited by Melissa Mallon, et al (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2023 and Engaging Undergraduates in Primary Source Research, edited by Lijuan Xu (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021). His current research explores multiple interpretations of what might fruitfully be framed as trans and non-binary lives in Argentina in the first half of the twentieth century.

He is available to give talks or class visits online or in person for a fee. Languages: English.

Recent Publications:

Videos:

Laura Leibman

Laura Arnold Leibman is Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Her work focuses on religion and the daily lives of women and children in early America, and uses everyday objects to help bring their stories back to life. She is the author of "The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects" (BGC 2020), "Indian Converts" (UMass Press, 2008) and "Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2012), which won a National Jewish Book Award, a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies, and was selected as one of Choice’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2013. Laura has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University, Utrecht University, the University of Panama, and the Leon Levy Foundation Professor of Jewish Material Culture at Bard Graduate Center. Laura, who earned her PhD from UCLA, is currently at work on a book that uses material culture to trace the history of members of a multiracial family who began their lives enslaved in the Caribbean but became some of the wealthiest Jews in New York.