Please review each message below from our outgoing and current directors.
Dear Friends,
This past year we celebrated 45 years as one of the foremost Jewish studies programs in the United States.
From its inception in 1976, the center has adhered to Samuel Melton’s vision, namely, to create and nurture a presence for Jewish studies at the university and in the community.
During the past 45 years, the Melton Center has had several directors.
Starting with Professor Bob Chazan who, with Sam Melton’s support, founded the center in 1976, other interim and full directors have included professors Yehiel Hayon, Amy Shuman, Jeremy Cohen, Daniel Frank and Matt Goldish.
After over 25 years of directing the center, I’m thrilled to announce that Professor Hannah Kosstrin will be taking over the directorship while I return full-time to the Department of Philosophy.
Professor Kosstrin is a dance historian specializing in Jewish and Israeli dance. She is associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Dance and has taken over as Director of the Melton Center for Jewish Studies.
Professor Kosstrin’s first monograph, Honest Bodies: Revolutionary Modernism in the Dances of Anna Sokolow (Oxford University Press, 2017) was a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award Finalist from the Association for Jewish Studies and examines the transnational circulation of American modernism through Anna Sokolow’s choreography among the communist and Jewish currents of the international Left from the 1930s to the 1960s in the United States, Mexico and Israel.
Her current book project Kinesthetic Peoplehood: Jewish Diasporic Dance Migrations (under contract in the Studies in Dance Theory Series of Oxford University Press) queries Jewish dance migrations between Israel and the United States for Sephardi, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jewish artists between the Cold War and COVID-19.
Professor Kosstrin is invested in building on the Melton Center’s strengths on campus and in the community to foster a diversity of programmatic support in Jewish studies for Ohio State faculty, students, staff and community members.
She is committed to deepening and expanding the infrastructure for Jewish history, culture and arts at Ohio State.
We are truly indebted to our many supporters and donors, who have enabled us to grow our program.
The Melton Center is only as vibrant as its members and supporters and we have you to thank.
Shanah tovah and warmest wishes,
T.M. Rudavsky
Former Director, Melton Center for Jewish Studies
Dear Friends,
I am thrilled to begin my tenure as director of the Melton Center for Jewish Studies.
I have long valued the Melton Center as a place that fosters the interdisciplinary pursuit of Jewish studies, and I look forward to continuing the center’s tradition of excellence.
I am honored to receive the proverbial baton from Professor Tamar Rudavsky, to build on the incredible work she did as director, and to lead the center as we continue to support and grow our programming for the study of Jewish history, culture and the arts on campus and in the community.
By way of introduction, I am a dance historian who researches Jewish and Israeli dance in global contexts.During my ten years on the Ohio State faculty as a Melton Center board member, I have had the pleasure of serving on numerous committees, organizing Jewish dance programs and participating in the wealth of programming and resources that the center has to offer.
My affiliation with the center and its programming traces back to my doctoral student days, when I greatly benefited from being a Samuel M. Melton Graduate Fellow.
I look forward to continuing the center’s deep tradition of programming across Jewish studies topics and disciplines, and fostering a vibrant community of faculty, staff, students and community members pursuing Jewish studies.
We hope that you will join us for our events in the upcoming year.
We are teaming up with Ohio State’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum to present Professor Samantha Baskin (Cleveland State University) for the Thomas and Diann Mann Symposium series, who will speak on Jewish comics.
We will welcome Professor Hillel Cohen (Hebrew University) for the Thomas and Diann Mann Annual Lecture on Israel and America, who will speak about relations between Mizrahim and Palestinian Arabs and share insights from his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We will also host the annual Pearl and Troy Feibel Lecture on Judaism and Law, collaborate on a religious laughter symposium with Ohio State’s Center for the Study of Religion, co-sponsor the Department of History’s presentation of research scholar Ra’anan Boustan (Princeton University) about mosaics in a fifth-century Galilean synagogue, and much more.
We will provide more details on these and other programs soon.
I look forward to seeing you at a program or two this year and I encourage you to come visit our library to experience one of the best Judaica collections in the country.
Your support is vital to the work that we do. If you are in Columbus, I am happy to meet you for coffee or a nosh. Do not hesitate to get in touch.
Shanah tovah u’metukah and warm wishes for a happy, healthy and sweet year ahead.
Hannah Kosstrin
Director, Melton Center for Jewish Studies
