Latest News
Winter 2010
Center Produces New Video
The short video, produced in 2010, features UNC students, faculty and supporters, all speaking about the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies and the Jewish Studies program at UNC Chapel Hill. View it here:
Shalom Y’all…
Exploring the Jewish Experience in the American South
One of Carolina’s unique academic strengths is its expertise in the history of the Jewish South, and how, over time, Jewish southerners have blended their regional southern identities with their religious and cultural identities. Professor Marcie Cohen Ferris offers a compelling, and very popular, course to Carolina students who want to learn more about “the braided identity” of Jewish Southerners.
Student Profile:
T. Fielder Valone, Jr., ’11
T. Fielder Valone, Jr., a History and American Studies major, is the first recipient of the Elsie Kaplan “Mother Shapiro” ZBT Undergraduate Research and Travel grant in Jewish Studies. He used the funding to help cover expenses for a month-long research trip in New York City this past July. There, he averaged six hours a day examining eyewitness testimonies of Lithuanian-Jewish survivors of genocide, collected immediately after World War II and now archived at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
The Carolina Center for Jewish Studies in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences gratefully thanks the donors who have supported its students, faculty, and programs during the University’s most recent fiscal year, which ran from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010.
Generous gifts to the Center in recent months will provide ongoing, crucial discretionary support for Jewish Studies. Recent gifts to the fund were made by Gary J. Kaminsky and Lori Kaminsky, who created the Gary J. and Lori Kaminsky Endowment Fund for Jewish Studies, and Jeffrey A. Gorelick and Bari L. Gorelick, who formed The Jeffrey A. and Bari L. Gorelick Fund for Excellence in Jewish Studies.
DIANA BLOOM, ’11, a German Language and Literature major, received a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service to conduct research on Jewish- Gentile relations in the Frankfurter Judengasse, the Frankfurt Jewish ghetto, during the Fettmilch uprising.
STEVEN WERLIN, who is completing his Ph.D. in Religious Studies, was awarded the 2010 Hershel Shanks Prize from the Biblical Archaeology Society. The award is given based on his academic paper entitled “Appetite for Destruction? The Archaeological Evidence for Jewish Iconoclasm.”
Director's Message:
Renowned Speakers Visit Chapel Hill
The primary mission of the Carolina Center
for Jewish Studies is to integrate the study of
Jewish history and culture into the more general
academic mission of the College of Arts and
Sciences. Over the course of the
past seven years, we’ve sought to
accomplish this mission in a
variety of ways.
I want to thank each of you for your
commitment to the Carolina Center for Jewish
Studies, which continues to grow and expand
its reach. We have a first-rate faculty, a wonderful
speakers series that brings great minds to
campus to help us broaden our understanding,
and students eager to learn.
Sincerely,
Karen M. Gil
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Make a Difference Through Annual Support
When you make an annual gift to the Center, you help us accomplish all our activities—from expanding our academic program, to hosting compelling events, to supporting faculty and students with their research initiatives.
