Background:
   A native of Annapolis, MD, I received my Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where I worked under the supervision of Prof. Todd M. Endelman. Interested in both Jewish and American history, I trained broadly, completing fields in medieval and modern Jewish history, American history from 1865-present, American cultural history, and cognate studies in modern Jewish literature and culture.

Research:
     My first book, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), examined the struggle of American Jews to fit into a world defined by the categories of "black" and "white." (Click here for a collection of reviews of the book). During the nineteenth century, Jews often understood themselves as a separate "race," a notion that was supported by the discourse of the period and which provided many Jews with an emotionally fulfilling self-definition at a time when many of the concrete markers of Jewishness were beginning to recede. Jews during this period found that they could use this satisfying language of "race" to describe themselves while still claiming to be part of the "white" American nation. By the turn of the century, however, under the impact of urbanization, immigration and shifting relations between whites and African Americans, the definition of "whiteness" in America began to narrow, forcing Jews to rethink their own racial self-understanding. As a result, in the period through World War II, Jews often found themselves torn between the need to assert their status as "white" and their desire to define themselves as a group apart, a desire most strongly satisfied through the language of race. Similarly, Jews were also torn in their relationship with African Americans, who represented the image of racial otherness Jews wanted to avoid, but who also served as a focus of Jewish identification because of the similarities in the two groups' histories of persecution and difference. The work challenges the standard interpretation of American Jewish history which posits the ability of Jews to create a neat synthesis between their Jewish and American commitments. Instead, it stresses the uneasy choices Jews often had to make in their attempt to negotiatie between multiple and overlapping identities.

I am currently at work on a new major project exploring the importance of print culture among Yiddish-speaking immigrants to the United States. Focusing on the dramatic rise and fall of the Yiddish printed word (newspapers, journals, dime novels, how-to books and popularizations of scientific works and European classics) in America between 1875 and 1945, the project explores the tensions and contradictions embedded in Jewish immigrants’ path to Americanization. It demonstrates how the democratic environment of America provided a particularly fertile field for the growth of a mass culture in Yiddish, one that transformed the lives of immigrants by allowing many of them to become readers and participate in the exchange of ideas and opinions for the first time. So wide was the appeal of American Yiddish publications that they even found a significant audience in Eastern Europe, where the indigenous institutions of mass culture in Yiddish were slow to develop before 1910. If America’s free environment encouraged the proliferation of Yiddish publications for the masses, however, it also challenged traditional cultural hierarchies and systems of authority among Jews, creating a situation in which the very meaning of Jewishness was up for grabs. Ultimately, because American Yiddish print culture served as a bridge to general knowledge and English-language media, its popularity raised questions about whether ethnicdistinctiveness could be maintained in a free environment where Yiddish was not the dominant language.

In 2007, I became the editor of American Jewish History, a quarterly scholarly journal published by Johns Hopkins University Press for the American Jewish Historical Society. For more information, see the journal's home page.

Teaching:     
     My first full-time position was as Assistant Professor in the Department of History and in the Program in Jewish Studies at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. In 2000, I arrived at Emory University, where I am now an Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Institute for Jewish Studies. At Emory, I teach a variety of courses in Jewish and American history and culture on both the graduate and undergraduate level (see my courses page for syllabi). I also direct the Graduate Program in Jewish Studies.

Family:
     I am married to Cheryl Haas-Goldstein, an attorney. We have two children, Max Evan Goldstein and Ella Ruth Goldstein.