Jews Across the Americas, 1492-present

Learning and Teaching Jewish American History

Jews Across the Americas, 1492-present

Natasha Zaretsky

Natasha Zaretsky, Ph.D. is a cultural anthropologist who works on human rights, genocide, and the politics of memory in the Americas and the Jewish diaspora. Currently, she is a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, where she leads the Truth in the Americas initiative. She has published extensively in the fields of human rights, anthropology, Jewish Studies, and Latin American Studies, especially focusing on Jews in Argentina. In addition to her work in Latin America, her new research also focuses on Holocaust memory and belonging in post-Soviet Jewish communities. She has taught courses in anthropology, Jewish Studies, Latin American Studies, human rights, comparative genocide, and writing at Princeton University, Rutgers University, and NYU. Currently, she is completing a documentary about the aftermath of the AMIA bombing for Jews in Argentina, 1000 Mondays. Her latest ethnography, Acts of Repair: Justice, Truth, and the Politics of Memory in Argentina (Rutgers University Press 2021) was awarded Honorable Mention for 2023 Best Book by the Latin American Jewish Studies Association.

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

Website: natashazaretsky.com

Links: https://1000mondaysfilm.com

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.