YIVO: Research Fellowships

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research accepted applications (the deadline is today, May 16) for six research fellowships with the Milstein Family Jewish Communal Archive Project. This three-year pilot project - "New York and the American Jewish Experience" - focuses on preservation and exploration of the Jewish communal archival heritage in the New York region.

Although the deadline has passed, I believe it is valuable to show readers what resources may be coming down the family history road in the future.

Suggested topics - from the 1880s to the present - include but are not limited to these: Jewish migration experience; social welfare and philanthropy in Jewish communal organizations; Americanization and acculturation; culture, intellectual life and the arts; youth education and camping; Jewish life in New York during and after World War II: GIs, DPs, and the organized Jewish community; Jews of New York in the McCarthy period; Jews of New York and the civil rights movement; and studying and preserving archival resources on Jewish life in New York

The project is being carried out by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in collaboration with the 92nd Street Y, The Educational Alliance, F·E·G·S Health and Human Services System, NYANA [New York Association for New Americans] and Surprise Lake Camp.

The fellowships are funded by the Milstein Family Foundation and the Howard and Abby Milstein Foundation, and they were open to faculty, post-doctoral scholars, independent scholars and doctoral students researching the history of Jews in the New York region as well as those researching the general American Jewish Experience with focus on New York.

The Fellows will present papers at a major conference on New York and the American Jewish Experience at the Center for Jewish History in fall 2009. When information is made available on that event, I'll inform readers.