Kirsten Fermaglich

Biography

Kirsten Fermaglich [Ph.D. History, NYU] has taught in the History Department at MSU since 2001. She is the author of A Rosenberg By Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America (NYU Press, 2018) which won the Saul Viener prize for the best book in American Jewish history from the American Jewish Historical Society in 2019. Her book on American social scientists and Holocaust metaphors, American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965, appeared in 2006. She is also co-editor (with Lisa Fine) of the Norton Critical Edition of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (2013). She is currently co-editor (with Adam Mendelsohn and Daniel Soyer) of the journal, American Jewish History. She has published in the Journal of American History, American Jewish History, the Michigan Historical Review, Southern Jewish History, and several edited volumes. She has won fellowships and grants from a number of organizations, including YIVO, the Posen Foundation, and the Association for Jewish Studies. In 2011, Kirsten received a Legacy Heritage grant from the AJS, which supported a year of programming at MSU in 2011-2012 on the theme “Telling Family Stories: Jews, Genealogy & History.” Kirsten also co-curated (with Ken Waltzer) a 2002-2003 MSU museum exhibit, “Uneasy Years: Michigan Jewry During Depression and War,” that was recognized by the Michigan Council for the Humanities as among the top thirty projects the Council supported in thirty years.