American Jewish History and the Question of Disciplinarity

The study of Jews in the United States is always embedded within a broader context. The field began in earnest within history departments in the 1970s, as an adjunct to the bourgeoning fields of urban, ethnic, and immigration history. In the decades since, the methodological training and approaches represented within the field have diversified significantly, as evidenced by recent job listings in “American Jewish studies.” Scholars in the field today are embedded not only within history or Jewish studies, but in anthropology, English, religious studies, American studies, sociology, and other fields. This paper will discuss the past and present of the field, with an eye toward the professional and intellectual repercussions of these disciplinary identities and approaches. Among other sources, it will draw on data from a new survey of American Jewish historians on their relationship to the field and to its related disciplines. It will conclude by discussing religious studies in particular as a growing disciplinary context for the study of American Jews.