Beth Wenger

A scholar of modern and American Jewish history, Wenger is the author of History Lessons: The Creation of American Jewish Heritage; New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (which was awarded the Salo Baron Prize in Jewish History); and The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America (a National Jewish Book award finalist). She has co-edited several anthologies and authored dozens of scholarly articles.

Wenger is an elected fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the recipient of the history department’s Richard S. Dunn Award for Distinguished Teaching. She is also deeply engaged in public history: She was one of four founding historians who helped to create the core exhibition at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and served as a consulting historian to the 2008 PBS series The Jewish Americans. She has also served as a distinguished lecturer of the Organization of American Historians.

Wenger is Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at Penn Arts & Sciences, and served as chair of the Department of History for six years. She was director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2005 to 2013. Among her many Penn affiliations, she is a resident senior fellow in the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society and Robert A. Fox Leadership Program, a member of the religious studies graduate group, and a member of the Faculty Advisory Board of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. She also serves as chair of the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History in New York.