Laura Arnold Leibman

Education

Ph.D.   English literature. UCLA. 1995.

M.A.    English literature. UCLA. 1993.

B.A.     English literature. UCDavis. 1989.

Books

The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects. Bard Graduate Center, 2020

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Jews in the Americas, 1776-1826, co-edited with Michael Hoberman and Hilit Surowitz-Israel. New York: Routledge, 2017.

Messianism, Secrecy, and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life.  London: Vallentine Mitchell Press.  Outstanding Academic Title, 2013; Winner of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award in Jewish American Studies and the 2012 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Cultural Studies and Media Studies.

A Cultural Edition of Experience Mayhew’s Indian Converts or, Some account of the lives and dying speeches of a considerable number of the Christianized Indians of Martha's Vineyard, in New-England (1727). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, Native Americans in the Northeast Series, 2008.

Laura Arnold (Leibman), co-ed. Instructor Guide, American Passages: A Literary Survey.  NY:  W.W. Norton, 2003. Author of “Introduction,” “Telling the Story of American Literature,” “Getting Started,” & co-author “Unit 1:  Native Voices.”

Laura Arnold (Leibman), co-ed.  Student Guide, American Passages: A Literary Survey.  NY:  W.W. Norton. 2003.  Author of “Preface,” “Introduction,” “Ways of Telling the Story of American Literature,” “Literature in its Cultural Context,” “Writing About Literature,” & co-author “Unit 1:  Native Voices.”

Selected Journal Articles & Book Chapters

Media

Academic DIrector, American Passages

Lead Advisor, Artifacts & Fiction

Current Service

Board of Directors, AJS

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Academic Council, AJHS 

Chair, Digital Media Committee, AJS

Advisory Board of Editors, American Jewish History

2010 - present

2010 - present

“Children, Toys, and Judaism.” The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood, ed. Anna Strhan, Stephen G. Parker and Susan Ridgely. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. 299-306.

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“Of Dogs, Vacations, and Jews,” American Jewish History. 101.1 (2017): 90-93.

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“The Crossroads of American History: Jews in the Colonial Americas,” By Dawn's Early Light: Jewish Contributions to American Culture from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War, ed. Adam Mendelsohn. Princeton: Princeton University Library, 2016. 12-23.

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"Making Jews: Race, Gender, and Identity in Barbados in the Age of Emancipation." Co-authored with Sam May.  Jewish American History. 99.1: 1-26.  Winner of the Wasserman Prize (2015) for best essay in American Jewish History.

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“What is Sephardic Culture?” Vida Sefaradí: A Century of Jewish Life in Portland [Exhibit Catalogue]. Portland, OR: Congregation Ahavath Achim and Oregon Jewish Museum, 2014. 11-16.

“Poetics of the Apocalypse: Messianism in Early Jewish American Poetry.” Studies in American Jewish Literature (Special Issue on Early Jewish American Literature). 33.1 (2014): 35-62.

“Grave Matters: Childhood, Identity, and Converso Funerary Art in Colonial America.”  Co-authored with Suzanna Goldblatt. Sephardic Horizons. 2.3 (2012).

“Cities of the Dead: Architectural Motifs and Burial Practices in Curaçao’s Religious and Ethnic Communities.” Co-authored with Kent Coupé. Markers (Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies) 27 (2011): 56-87.

“Sephardic Sacred Space in Colonial America,” Jewish History 25.1 (2011): 13-41.

“Early American Mikvaot: Ritual Baths as the Hope of Israel.” Religion in the Age of Enlightenment 1: 109-145. To be reprinted in American Jewry: Transcending the European Experience, ed. Christian Wiese and Cornelia Wilhelm. London: Continuum, 2013.

"From the Holy Land to New England Canaan:  Rabbi Karigal and Sephardic Itinerant Preaching in the 18th Century." Early American Literature 44.1 (2009): 71-93.

“Tradition and Innovation in a Colonial Wampanoag Family from Martha’s Vineyard.” In Early Native Literacies in New England: a Documentary and Critical Anthology.  Ed. Hilary Wyss & Kristina Bross. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008. 174-97.

"Bridge of Difference:  Sherman Alexie and the Politics of Mourning." American Literature 77.3 (2005): 541-61. Reprinted in Sherman Alexie (Critical Insights), ed. Leon Lewis. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2012. 251-74.

“'Now...Didn't Our People Laugh?' Female Misbehavior and Algonquian Custom in Mary Rowlandson's Captivity and Restauration,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 21.4 (1997): 1-28.