About the Contributors
Katya Gibel Azoulay was born in NYC, made aliya in 1970
after graduating from The Brearley School. During that period, she
married, had three children, earned a B.A. and M.A. from Hebrew
University; she returned to the U.S. in 1991 to pursue a Ph.D. at Duke
University and was invited Grinnell College in 1996 where she is
currently Associate Professor in Anthropology & American Studies. Dr.
Gibel Azoulay is author of Black, Jewish and Interracial: It's Not the
Color of Your Skin but the Race of Your Kin and Other Myths of
Identity, co-editor of the "Jewish Women of Color" issue of
Bridges: Journal of Jewish Feminists, and has published articles
in various journals including Cultural Studies, Developing World
Bioethics, Identities. Research in African Literatures as well as
review essays in American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist and
Biography.
Maya Barzilai completed her M.A. in Comparative Literature at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D.
degree at the University of California, Berkeley. She researches
twentieth century German, Hebrew, and Yiddish post-war literature and
film. She has written about the alignment of female figures with the
traumatic aporia of the Shoah in an essay entitled "Facing the Past and
the Female Specter in W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants" (published in
W. G. Sebald: A Critical Companion). She recently received the
Horst Frenz prize of the American Comparative Literature Association for
a collaborative presentation on "The Challenge of Lyric Address in War
Poems by Ingeborg Bachmann and Yitzhak Laor." While living in Israel,
Maya was active in the Palestinian-Israeli solidarity group, Ta'ayush
("living together"), which organizes joint protest marches, work days,
and convoys to the Occupied Territories. She writes poetry in Hebrew and
English, and her poem "The Sleepwalkers" appeared in a recent issue of
the journal Bridges dedicated to writings by Israeli women on seeking
peace.
Shifra Bronznick is the founder of Bronznick & Co., LLC, a
change management firm that specializes in launching new initiatives,
restructuring organizations and developing programs for the
not-for-profit sector. An expert in the field of leadership and women's
advancement, Ms. Bronznick is the founding President of "Advancing Women
Professionals and the Jewish Community." In collaboration with her
client, Ma'yan, she launched the National Women's Leadership Initiative
and Impact & Influence, a summit for Jewish women volunteer
leaders. Ms. Bronznick also designed the program for the White House
Project's National Women's Leadership Summit, which convened the most
influential women in business, government, not-for-profit and academia
in 2002 and 2003. Previously, Ms. Bronznick served as Executive
Vice-President of Swig, Weiler & Arnow Mgt. Co., Inc., one of the
premier commercial real estate firms in New York.
Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell has been teaching and writing about
Jewish women's history and feminist spirituality for the past twenty
years. The founding director of the American Jewish Congress Feminist
Center in Los Angeles, Elwell served as the first rabbinic Director of
Ma'yan, the Jewish Women's Project of the Jewish Community Center on the
Upper West Side in New York City. She has served congregations in
California, New Jersey and Virginia, and worked as rabbi and chaplain of
Beit T'Shuvah, a residential program for Jewish felons and other
recovering addicts. She has worked with congregations across the country
to assist them in developing strategies to welcome and integrate GLBT
congregants and their families into synagogue life. She currently serves
as the Director of the Pennsylvania Council and the Federation of Reform
Synagogues of Greater Philadelphia of the Union for Reform Judaism, as
well as co-chair of the Bi-National Advisory Board of FaithTrust
Institute. Elwell, who earned her doctorate at Indiana University and
was ordained by Hebrew Union College, is the mother of two adult
daughters. She and her partner Nurit Levi Shein live in
Philadelphia.
Sally Gottesman has long been involved in Jewish feminist
activities. Perhaps since she was the first girl to have a Saturday
morning bat-mitzvah at Temple Shomrei Emunah, a Conservative synagogue
in Montclair, New Jersey in 1975. Leaping forward 10 years, in 1985
Sally became the first paid employee of the Israel Women's Network in
Jerusalem and in the later half of that decade she was the first New
York/Tri-State Director of the New Israel Fund. Since that time, she
graduated from the Yale School of Management and has spent the fifteen
years as a management consultant to not-for-profit organizations, first
for KPMG and now independently. Her clients have beem The Nathan
Cummings Foundation, Hillel, Young Survival Coalition, and The Hebrew
Free Loan Society. Sally serves as the Chair of Moving Traditions, a new
organization that seeks to be the premier resource for those who are
looking for inspiration and information to practice Judaism at key life
moments. All Moving Traditions programs are informed by a consideration
of gender, a respect for the diversity of meaningful Jewish practices,
and the desire to make Judaism a force for good in people's lives and in
the world. Moving Traditions' project Rosh Hodesh: It's a Girl Thing!
will be featured at over 200 institutions nationwide this fall. Sally
also currently serves on the Boards of StorahTelling and American Jewish
World Service and is a member of Achayot Or, an annual gathering of
Jewish feminists.
Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross is an international lecturer and
motivational speaker with expertise in the Hebraic Oral Tradition,
Hasidick teachings, and Practical Kabbalah. Hadassah is "radiant! An
elegant creature in Italian shoes and tailored clothes" (The
Forward) and has been identified as "part of a broadening,
unconventional movement to teach Torah and prayer to an ever-growing
audience across America" (Jerusalem Report). Born in Budapest,
Hungary in the mid 1920's, Rebbetzin Gross is descended from an
illustrious Hasidic dynasty, is the widow of six prominent rabbis and
has established herself in the Jewish community and beyond as a personal
soul-trainer to the ultra-orthodox elite (and elitists from all faiths
and backgrounds). She has appeared before thousands worldwide in venues
such as BAMcafé, The Ashkenaz Festival for New Yiddish Culture
(Toronto), The Museum of Jewish Heritage, JCC Manhattan, JCC San
Francisco, Burning Man Festival 2003, Lansky Lounge (NYC), the Belt
Theater (NYC), Echo Club (LA) and the Limmud NY Conference. Press and
media appearances include a cover story for Ha'Aretz Magazine,
and a principal role in the Channel 10 Israeli TV series "The Search for
the 10 Commandments".
Jayne K. Guberman is Director of Oral History at the Jewish
Women's Archive (JWA). She directed Weaving Women's Words, JWA's
oral history project to record the life experiences of American Jewish
women and served as project director for the Weaving Women's
Words exhibitions in Seattle and Baltimore. She is editor of In
Our Own Voices: A Guide to Conducting Life History Interviews with
American Jewish Women, JWA's guidebook on conducting
gender-sensitive oral histories. Currently Guberman directs Katrina's
Jewish Voices, an online collecting and oral history initiative to
capture and preserve the American Jewish community's experiences of
Hurricane Katrina. Guberman holds a BA from Harvard College and
received her PhD in Folklore and Folklife from the University of
Pennsylvania.
Judith Hauptman is the E. Billi Ivry Professor of Talmud and
Rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Known in particular for
her reinterpretation of talmudic sources along feminist lines, Dr.
Hauptman has spent her professional life engaged not only in the study
of women's roles in Judaic thought, but also in an evaluation of the
social and ethical norms of the rabbinic period that served to shape the
outlines of a traditional faith passed down through the ages. Dr.
Hauptman has also become acclaimed for her synoptic studies - a
specialized area of talmudic research in which related texts are
examined for their implications about the history of Jewish law. Her
books include Development of the Talmudic Sugya: Relationship Between
Tannaitic and Amoraic Sources and Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's
Voice. Her most recent articles, published in Judaism, are
"Does the Tosefta Precede the Mishnah?" and "How Old is the Haggadah?"
She is currently writing a book on the Mishnah and the Tosefta, two
early rabbinic works. Dr. Hauptman is a board member of the Association
for Jewish Studies and has served as rabbinics section co-ordinator for
the last three annual conferences. Dr. Hauptman received a degree in
Talmud from the Seminary College of Jewish Studies at JTS (now Albert A.
List College) and a degree in economics from Barnard College and earned
a MA and a PhD in Talmud from JTS. In addition, she has studied at
Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In May 2003, she was ordained as a rabbi
by the Academy for Jewish Religion. She serves as volunteer chaplain to
the Jewish residents at the Cabrini Center for Nursing and
Rehabilitation, a Catholic facility in Lower Manhattan.
Rachel Havrelock is a professor of Jewish Studies at the
University of Illinois, Chicago and a pioneering member of the UIC
Jewish-Muslim initiative. She is the co-author of Women on the
Biblical Road: Ruth, Naomi and the Female Journey, as well as
articles on Judaism and gender and feminist commentary. Her current
project is a book on the mythic history of the Jordan River. In
addition to her academic endeavors, Rachel is a playwright and director.
Her play, From Tel Aviv to Ramallah: A Beatbox Journey, was
nominated as best new play by the Helen Hayes Awards and continues to
tour the U.S.. Soundtrack City Chicago, a hip-hop comedy about
urban life, is currently enjoying a run at Chicago's Viaduct
Theater.
Elizabeth Holtzman concentrates her practice in government
relations at the federal, state and local levels, and in litigation. She
joined Herrick, Feinstein after twenty years in government. She served
for eight years as a U.S. Congresswoman and won national attention for
her role on the House Judiciary committee during Watergate. She was
subsequently elected District Attorney of Kings County (Brooklyn), the
only woman ever elected DA in NYC, serving for eight years. As DA, she
argued successfully before the United States Supreme Court, and
pioneered new strategies for the prosecution of rape and environmental
crimes. She led the effort to overturn law allowing blacks to be removed
from juries. Liz was also the only woman ever elected Comptroller of New
York City. She invested the city's public funds in building hundreds of
units of affordable housing. A bill she authored as comptroller was
recently signed in to law 12 years later. It holds gun manufacturers
liable for the injuries caused by illegal guns. Liz was appointed, by
President Clinton, to the Nazi and Japanese Imperial War Criminal
Records Interagency Working Group, which is overseeing the
declassification of the U.S. government's secret Nazi war crimes files.
Paula Hyman is the Lucy Moses Professor of Modern Jewish
History at Yale University and President of the American Academy for
Jewish Research. While a graduate student at Columbia University, Paula
Hyman became a feminist activist, with a particular interest in bringing
feminist change into the Jewish community. She is a founding member of
Ezrat Nashim, which led the charge for the admission of women to the
Conservative rabbinate. Much of her scholarship has focused on the
roles and representation of Jewish women. A co-author of The Jewish
Woman in America, she published Gender And Assimilation in Modern
Jewish History and co-edited (with Deborah Dash Moore) the
prize-winning encyclopedia, Jewish Women in America. Most
recently, she edited an English-language version of the memoirs of an
otherwise forgotten Jewish feminist from Poland, Puah Rakovsky's My
Life as a Radical Jew. She is currently co-editing a multi-volume
encyclopedia on Jewish women from the Hebrew Bible to the present and
beginning a project on antisemitism, gender, and Jewish identity.
Lisa Jervis is the co-founder and publisher of Bitch:
Feminist Response to Pop Culture, a national nonprofit quarterly
magazine offering feminist commentary on our intensely mediated world.
She is also a founding board member of the media training and advocacy
organization Women in Media and News, and editor at large of LiP:
Informed Revolt. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and
books, including Ms., the San Francisco Chronicle,
Utne, Mother Jones, the Women's Review of Books,
Bust, Hues, Salon, Girlfriends, Punk
Planet, Body Outlaws (Seal Press), and The Bust Guide to
the New Girl Order (Penguin). She is the co-editor Young Wives'
Tales: New Adventures in Love and Partnership (Seal Press), and is
currently at work on a book about the intellectual legacy of gender
essentialism and its effect on contemporary feminism.
Faith Jones is a librarian and translator of Yiddish
literature. Her translations have appeared in numerous poetry journals
and in Beautiful as the Moon, Radiant as the Stars, an
anthology from Warner Books. Her scholarly articles, on topics as
diverse as McCarthyism, library history and Yiddish poets, have appeared
in Canadian Jewish Studies and the forthcoming issue of
Judaica Librarianship. She has contributed entries to several
forthcoming encyclopedias: the Yiddish writers volume of the Dictionary
of Literary Biography, the revised edition of the Encyclopedia
Judaica, and Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical
Encyclopedia. She co-produced, with Henry Sapoznik, "Live From
KlezKamp," a double-CD anthology of live recordings from the famous
annual music retreat. She is Yiddish editor of and a contributor to
Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, published by Indiana
University Press.
Norma Baumel Joseph is Associate Professor
in the Department
of Religion at Concordia University, Director
of the Women and Religion specialization, and Graduate Program Director
of the Doctoral Religion Program. Her teaching and research areas
include women and Judaism, Jewish law and ethics, and women and
religion. Norma appeared in and was consultant to the films Half The
Kingdom and Untying the Bonds . . . Jewish Divorce. Her doctoral
dissertation focused on the legal decisions of Rabbi Moses Feinstein as
they describe and delineate separate spheres for women in the Jewish
community. Since the early 1970's she has promoted women's greater
participation Jewish religious and communal life. Founding member of the
Canadian Coalition of Jewish Women for the Get (Jewish divorce), Dr.
Joseph successfully worked with the community and the Federal Government
to pass a law in 1990 (Divorce Act, ch.18, 21.1) that would protect
Jewish women in difficult divorce situations and aid them in their
pursuit of a Jewish divorce. Author of many publications, Norma Baumel
Joseph has recieved numerous awards and grants in recognition of her
scholarly and pedagogic talents.
Sarah Karpman, a former intern at the Jewish Women's Archive,
is a budding oral historian, part-time secretary at an
affordable-housing non-profit, and a newcomer to San Francisco's rich
cultural life. While she's not looking for a bus stop or consulting her
Muni map, she volunteers with the Lavender Scrolls Project, preserving
the history of Bay area GLBT seniors, hikes up nearby Bernal Hill, and
saves up for her future project, a nation-wide oral history tour of the
last remaining women's bookstores. Until then, she's co-organizing a
GLBT affinity group for Bay area Brandeis alumni.
Irena Klepfisz is a poet,
Yiddish translator, and teacher of English literature, Yiddish language
and literature, and Women's Studies. She is the author of the poetry
collection A Few Words in the Mother Tongue and Dreams of an
Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches, and Diatribes and a
recipient of an National Endowment for the Arts grant in poetry. She is
a co-editor of The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology and
Jewish Women's Call for Peace: A Handbook for Jewish Women on the
Israeli/ Palestinian Conflict. She served for many years as Yiddish
editor for Bridges magazine and contributed the introductory
essay to Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers, the
first anthology of women's Yiddish prose. She has been a long-time
activist whose work has addressed, homophobia in the Jewish community,
women and peace in the Middle East, and secular Jewish identity. She is
Adjunct Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Barnard where she
teaches courses on Jewish women and Jewish women's literature.
Lori Lefkovitz is the Sadie Gottesman and Arlene Gottesman
Reff Professor of Gender and Judaism and director of Kolot: The Center
for Jewish Women's and Gender Studies at the Reconstructionist
Rabbinical College. As a Fulbright scholar, she held a visiting
professorship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2004, where she
taught the literature of American Jewish Feminism. Her other awards
include an academic fellowship at the Philadelphia Association for
Psychoanalysis, a Woodrow Wilson dissertation fellowship in the Women's
Studies Division, and a Golda Meir post-doctoral fellowship at the
Hebrew University. She holds a B.A. from Brandeis University, and M.A.
and Ph.D. from Brown University and is the author of books and articles
in the fields of literature, critical theory, and Jewish feminism,
including Shaping Losses: Cultural Memory and the Holocaust
(co-edited with Julia Epstein). Kolot's programs include
Ritualwell.org, an online resource for Jewish feminist liturgy and
ceremonies.
Laura Levitt is the Director of Jewish Studies and an
Associate Professor of Religion at Temple University where she does
extensive teaching in the University's Women's Studies Program. During
the spring of 2005, she was a Visiting Professor of Religion at Williams
College. She is the author of Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent
Search for Home; co-editor with Miriam Peskowitz of Judaism Since
Gende; and with Shelley Hornstein and Laurence Silberstein an editor
of Impossible Images: Contemporary Art after the Holocaust. She
recently edited and contributed to "Changing Focus: Family Photography
and American Jewish Identity" a special issue of The Scholar & The
Feminist Online. Her current book project Ordinary Jews looks
at 20th century American Jewish life and everyday losses from under the
shadow of the Holocaust using family photographs.
Khadijah Miller is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary
Studies at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia. Her doctorate
is in African American Studies, with a concentration in Black Women's
20th Century American History from Temple University. She has taught
African American Studies, African American History and Women's Studies
courses at Temple University, Drexel University and West Chester
University. Prior to teaching in the Interdisciplinary Studies
Department at Norfolk State University, she was the director of the
Women's Studies program at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania. In early
2006, she will have published entries in the Encyclopedia of the
African Diaspora, edited by Carole Boyce Davies, Ph.D. and is
currently engaged in a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities on "Extending the Reach: Year Long Programming on the African
Diaspora."
Gina Nahai is the author of the Pulitzer nominated Cry of
the Peacock, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, and
Sunday's Silence. Her stories and reviews have appeared in
numerous journals including The Southern California Anthology and
the Los Angeles Times. Ms. Nahai has a Masters in International
Relations from UCLA and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from USC. She
is an adjunct professor of Creative Writing at USC, has studied the
politics of Iran for the United States Department of Defense, and serves
on the advisory board of the International Women's Media Foundation.
Judith Plaskow is professor of religious studies at Manhattan
College and a Jewish feminist theologian. She has been teaching, writing
and speaking about feminist studies in religion and Jewish feminism for
over thirty years. With Carol P. Christ, she co-edited Womanspirit
Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion and Weaving the Visions:
New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, anthologies of feminist
theology used in many women's studies and religious studies courses.
With Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, she co-founded the Journal of
Feminist Studies in Religion, and she co-edited it for its first
decade (1985-94). Her book Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a
Feminist Perspective has become a Jewish feminist classic. A
collection of her essays, The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism,
Judaism, and Sexual Ethics 1972-2003, was recently published by
Beacon Press.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin is an author, journalist, lecturer and
social justice activist. A founding editor of Ms. magazine, she
is also the author of nine books, most recently her first novel -
Three Daughters - which was published last fall. Among her
non-fiction titles are two acclaimed memoirs - Getting Over Getting
Older and Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in
America. In addition, she was the editor of the anthology,
Stories for Free Children, and was the editorial consultant on
Free to Be, You and Me, Marlo Thomas' groundbreaking children's
book, record and television special. Ms. Pogrebin's articles have been
published in The New York Times, the Washington Post,
Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation,
TV Guide, Harpers Bazaar, Family Circle, and
Good Housekeeping, among other publications. She is a regular
columnist for Moment magazine, and for ten years, she wrote "The Working
Woman" column in The Ladies Home Journal. Ms. Pogrebin has also
been a leader in many social justice causes and organizations. She
recently completed four years as President of the Authors Guild. Besides
serving as an editor at Ms. magazine for nearly twenty years, Ms.
Pogrebin also was a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus;
the Ms. Foundation for Women; and the International Center for Peace in
the Middle East . She serves on the advisory boards of the Harvard
Divinity School Women in Religion Program and the Brandeis University
Women's Studies Program. Her civic activities have included two terms as
Chair of the Board of Americans for Peace Now, an advocacy organization
that works toward a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. She participated for more than ten years in a dialogue group
made up of Blacks and Jews, and for five years in a Jewish-Palestinian
Dialogue Project. Letty Cottin Pogrebin's honors and awards range from
Who's Who in America; to a Yale University Poynter Fellowship in
Journalism; to an Emmy Award for Free to Be You and Me. She
lives in New York City with her husband Bert, an attorney. The couple
has three grown children and six grandchildren.
Judith Rosenbaum is Director of Education at the Jewish
Women's Archive (JWA) and co-curator of JWA's online exhibit, "Jewish
Women and the Feminist Revolution." She earned a BA in History from Yale
University and received her PhD in American Civilization, with a focus
on women's history, from Brown University. The recipient of a Fulbright
Fellowship to Israel, she has taught women's studies and Jewish studies
at Brown, Boston University, the Center for Adult Jewish Learning at
Hebrew College, and Gann Academy: The New Jewish High School of Greater
Boston.
Danya Ruttenberg is the editor of Yentl's Revenge: The Next
Wave of Jewish Feminism. She serves as a contributing editor to
Lilith and Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal,
as well as contributing writer to Jewschool.com. Her writing has
appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including the San
Francisco Chronicle, Tikkun, Bitch, Heeb,
Salon, The Best Jewish Writing 2002, The Women's Seder
Sourcebook and the forthcoming Encyclopedia Judaica and
The Women's Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third-Wave
Feminism. She is also featured in the forthcoming documentary,
Young, Jewish and Left. She is currently studying for rabbinic
ordination at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and has lectured
widely about religion and culture. Danya received her B.A. in Religious
Studies from Brown University and her M.A. in Rabbinics from the
University of Judaism. She has also studied at Sarah Lawrence College,
the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, The Jewish Theological Seminary,
Hebrew University and the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary.
Naomi Scheman was born in Brooklyn,
grew up on Long Island,
and graduated from Barnard in 1968. Since 1975 she has been part of the
NY-Jewish diaspora, living first in Ottawa and then in Minneapolis/St.
Paul, where she is Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies. A
collection of her essays, Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge,
Authority, and Privilege, was published in 1993. She thinks,
teaches, and writes on a wide range of topics, all of which end up
puzzling over the same set of fundamental questions: how can we
understand the concepts we use to construct and explain ourselves and
each other, taking into account differences of social location,
especially concerning inequalities of power and privilege, which
destabilize both the "we" that does the constructing and explaining and
the critical, reflective "we" that tries to understand it all. Her
particular interest in social locations that are, in normative terms,
impossible or unintelligible has led her to reflect on her own identity
as a secular, non-Zionist, strongly Jewish-identified, morally committed
atheist. She has explored her Jewish identity most directly in two
essays (which will appear in her second collection, tentatively titled,
Shifting Ground: Margins, Diasporas, and the Reading of
Wittgenstein, "Terminal Moraine," and "Queering the Center by
Centering the Queer: Reflections on Transsexuals and Secular Jews."
Nancy Schwartzman is the director of "Between Us" a
documentary-in-progress set in Jerusalem and New York. She is a
founding editor and Creative Director of Heeb Magazine, responsible for
the photo stories "Word to Your Bubbe," "Jewess" and "The Passion." She
is the founder of NYC-safestreets.org a non-profit dedicated to linking
businesses and creating maps in Brooklyn and Manhattan to help women
travel safely. For five years she has been the grants officer for
Media, Visual Arts and Performing Arts at the National Foundation for
Jewish Culture. She is a graduate of Columbia University with a degree
in Art History and a minor in Film. Currently she lives in New York
City.
Eve Sicular is drummer, bandleader and founder of Metropolitan
Klezmer (octet) and Isle of Klezbos (sextet). The versatile bands have
toured internationally, as well as having recordings featured by shows
from The Royal Ballet in London to The L Word on Showtime. Her research
on queer subtext in Yiddish cinema and related topics has appeared in
publications including Davka, Mix, Lilith, Jewish Folklore & Ethnology
Review, Queer Jews, and When Joseph Met Molly: A Reader on Yiddish Film.
Since 1994, she has presented her "Celluloid Closet of Yiddish Film"
clips-lecture at a wide assortment of festivals, colleges, media and
community venues throughout North America and Europe. She is a former
curator of film and photo archives at the YIVO Institute for Jewish
Research in New York, and was on staff for The Museum of Modern Art's
landmark retrospective, "Yiddish Film: Between Two Worlds." She has also
worked as a film & video archivist for the Warhol Foundation as well as
doing refugee resettlement casework for Soviet émigrés. She formed
Popcorn Sister Productions while living in Seattle to produce such gay
cultural multi-media presenters as Vito Russo and Allan Berube. A
graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe in History & Literature of Russia, she
wrote her thesis, "Ideology & Montage," on the early work of pioneering
Soviet documentarian Esther Shub. Her own film work has included the
animated musical short "Vegetable Rag." A two-time Outmusic Award-winner
for CDs produced on Rhythm Media Records, she is currently completing
Metropolitan Klezmer's fourth release, "Traveling Show," an all-live
recording out in time for Pesakh 2007. Full details and video footage
are also available at: http://myspace.com/metroklez.
Alisa Solomon has just joined Columbia University's faculty as
director of the Arts and Culture major in the new MA program at School
of Journalism. She was a professor for nearly 20 years at Baruch
College-City University of New York in English/Journalism and at the
CUNY Graduate Center in the Ph.D. programs in Theater and in English. A
theater critic, scholar and journalist, she was a staff writer at the
Village Voice for 14 years and still freelances for the Voice,
where she has won awards for her reporting on U.S. immigration policy,
reproductive rights, and electoral politics. She has also written for
The Nation, The Forward, the New York Times and
other publications. She is the author of Re-Dressing the Canon:
Essays on Theater and Gender, winner of the George Jean Nathan Award
for Dramatic Criticism, and co-editor (with Tony Kushner) of
Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and (with Framji Minwalla) of The
Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Theater.
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