About the AJS Women's Caucus
AJS Women's Caucus Call for Mentorship Award Nominations
Cashmere Subvention Award in Jewish Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
Prize for Innovative Scholarship in Gender and Jewish Studies
Focus on Gender Equity in Publishing and Research
Founded in 1986, the AJS Women's Caucus supports women and all marginalized genders in the profession and advances the study of gender and intersectionality within the Association for Jewish Studies and Jewish Studies. The Caucus welcomes people of all marginalized genders including women, trans people, non-binary people, intersex people, genderqueer people, and gender questioning people, and sexual orientations as members.
The Women's Caucus sponsors sessions on gender, pedagogy, and other professional topics at the annual AJS conference.
We offer a number of competitive grants such as book subventions, paper prizes, a mentoring program for emerging woman scholars, and travel grants for graduate students.
The Women's Caucus holds an annual conference breakfast-time meeting, usually on Monday morning of the conference. Here, graduate students, independent scholars, contingent scholars, and junior and senior scholars meet, network, and share recently published work in gender as well as information on relevant conferences and fellowships.
Established at a time when feminist concerns and scholarship on gender were marginalized within the field of Jewish Studies, the Women's Caucus has brought these issues to greater prominence within the Association for Jewish Studies and the larger scholarly community.
Cochairs: Susan Shapiro and Jennifer Thompson
For more information, email the Women's Caucus at womenscaucus@associationforjewishstudies.org.
Mentorship is a cornerstone of the Women’s Caucus. From championing gender equity in publishing to advising early career scholars within and beyond academia, the Caucus recognizes that advancing gender justice does not happen in a vacuum. Since
2018, the Caucus has offered an award at the annual AJS conference recognizing outstanding service to the profession through mentorship in Jewish Studies. This award was established as an acknowledgement that mentoring labor has historically fallen
disproportionately to women. Its mission has since broadened to recognize the continued and essential value of this work by mentors of all genders, often in addition to their regular professional and personal duties.
Nomination Process: Nominator(s) must be members in good standing of the Women’s Caucus with dues paid at the time of submission. Nominees and co-signers do not have to be past or current members. Nominees may be of any gender, including gender
non-conforming.
Please submit a 1–2 page letter describing the nominee’s contributions to the professional success of members of groups historically disadvantaged on the basis of gender in Jewish Studies. Previous successful nominations have described nominees’
formal and informal mentoring efforts, emotional support, and demonstrated ability to foster creativity and innovation among the scholars they have mentored.
The caucus encourages submissions of:
1) One letter per nominee, with multiple co-signers;
2) First-time nominees;
3) Revised and strengthened nominations that were previously unsuccessful;
4) Writers, co-signers, and nominees inside and outside of the United States.
Nomination documents should be electronically submitted as email attachments to womenscaucus@associationforjewishstudies.org. The Award for Mentorship
Committee will notify the winner prior to the annual AJS conference, and they will be honored at the Women’s Caucus event during the conference.
Deadline: November 15, 2026
Previous winners include:
2018: Marsha Rosenblitt and Fran Malino
2019: Laura Levitt
2020: Judith Baskin and Sarah Horowitz
2021: Deborah Dash Moore and Anita Norich
2022: Marion Kaplan
2023: Laura Leibman
2024: Elisheva Carlebach
2025: Susan
Shapiro and Josh Lambert
The deadline to apply for this year's award has passed.
The AJS Women's Caucus announces a grant of $1,000 to support scholarly publication in the area of Jewish, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Book proposals to be considered for the grant must make a clear argument for the ways in which the work represents a contribution to any of these fields and a subfield of Jewish Studies. The grant is open to scholars at all stages of their careers. While a contract for publication is not required at the time of application, funds can only be disbursed once a contract with a publisher is executed. In the hope that the subvention grant might help a scholar to secure a contract, the expectation is that the contract will be in hand within 12 months of receiving the award.
Required Documents (please include in one file in the following order):
Melissa R. Klapper, Professor of History and Director of Women's & Gender Studies, Rowan University
Tamar Menashe, Jay and Leslie Cohen Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Department of History, Emory University
The deadline to apply for this year's award has passed.
What is the next step for Jewish feminist and gender studies? In what ways might recent theoretical developments in feminist, gender, queer, and trans theory reshape the various disciplines within Jewish studies?
In recognition of the importance of these questions, the AJS Women’s Caucus invites submissions for its Prize for Innovative Scholarship in Gender and Jewish Studies. The prize is awarded to a paper presented at the most recent AJS Annual Meeting (December 2025) in any field of Jewish studies that opens new avenues of inquiry or significantly advances Jewish feminist or gender studies. The prize carries a cash award of $500.
To be considered, papers must have been prepared specifically for presentation at the December 2025 AJS Annual Meeting. Deadline for submission June 15th.
To be considered, submissions must:
Submissions must also include a cover letter containing:
Jacob Evoy, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, University of Western Ontario
Jeremiah Lockwood, Visiting Professor, Borns Jewish Studies Program, Indiana University
Lilly Maier, PhD Candidate, University of Munich
Honorable Mention
Maayan Aner, St. Peter College, Oxford University
Tanya Zion-Waldoks, Assistant Professor, Seymour Fox School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
To help draw attention to this issue, we are sharing a number of online pieces, including a series published by Feminist Studies in Religion on “manels,” “manthologies,” and the failure to include women scholars in academic ventures. Many of these pieces have been written by women in Jewish Studies.
See the series by Michal Raucher for Feminist Studies in Religion:
Mara Benjamin “On the Uses of Academic Privilege (@theTable 'Manthologies)"
Feminist Studies in Religion 27
May, 2019
Michal Raucher “Even the Allies Are Misogynist (@theTable: 'Manthologies')”
Feminist Studies in Religion May 28,
2019
Alison Joseph “It’s Not that Easy: On the Challenges Facing an Editor”
Feminist Studies in Religion May
29, 2019
Sarah Imhoff “404 Women Not Found Error"
Feminist Studies in Religion May 30, 2019
Kecia Ali “No Manthology Is an Island”
Feminist Studies in Religion June 4, 2019
Susanna Heschel “Women in Jewish Studies: Conversations from the Periphery”
Feminist Studies in Religion May
31, 2019
and also:
Robert Cargill “The Gender Divide”
Biblical Archeology Society May
24, 2019
