SJHS 27th Annual Conference Speaker Bios

Bill Aron
Bill Aron wears two hats as a sociologist and the leading photographer of Southern Jewry. From the Corners of the Earth: Contemporary Photographs of the Jewish World (1986) records global Jewish life from Havana to Jerusalem to New York. With a Ph.D.from the University of Chicago Aron brings an eye sensitive to both the documentary and aesthetic value of his subject. His work is exhibited and collected internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Jewish Museum in New York; The Chicago Art Institute; The Skirball Museum in Los Angeles; Israel Museum in Jerusalem; and Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv. Since 1989, Aron has been collaborating with The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience on a project to depict Jewish life in the Deep South. Algonquin Books is publishing Shalom Y'all: Images of Southern Jewish Life in America.

Paul M. Gaston
Paul M. Gaston is, in the words of E. J. Ayers, "one of the most prominent historians of the American south." In 1957 he began his 40 year tenure at the University of Virginia where he is now Professor of History Emeritus. A dedicated and distinguished teacher, Gaston has published widely on Southern history and culture. The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking (1970) is indispensable to any understanding of the region. An activist as well as a scholar-Gaston was beaten while participating in an early Charlottesville civil-rights sit in-he served as President of the Southern Regional Council from 1984-1988. Dr. Gaston has recently turned his attention to Jewish identity and a 1950s scandal in Memphis.

Louis D. Rubin

Louis D. Rubin, Jr.'s influence on Southern culture has been described as "crucial" and "immeasurable." Born in Charleston in 1923, Rubin has made his mark as an essayist, critic, novelist, journalist, teacher, editor, and publisher. After teaching for ten years at Hollins College, he joined the English faculty at the University of North Carolina in 1967 where he is now University Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus. In 1983 he founded Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill to nurture talented young Southern writers. Among the writers Rubin has mentored are John Barth, Lee Smith, Kaye Gibbons, Annie Dillard, and Clyde Edgerton. The author of 52 books, Rubin will read from his latest, My Father's People: A Southern Jewish Family.

Jonathan D. Sarna

Jonathan D. Sarna, Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, has assumed the mantel of Jacob Rader Marcus as the preeminent historian of American Jewry. The author or editor of 15 books, Sarna writes on Jewish social, cultural, and religious history from the colonial era to the modern day. The American Jewish Experience: A Reader is a popular college text. Sarna currently chairs the Academic Advisory and Editorial Board of the Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives and the on-line Judaic Studies network, H-Judaic. Sarna, who is currently writing a history of American Judaism, comes to Shreveport after a year in Jerusalem.

Norman Finkelstein

Norman Finkelstein is a teacher and librarian and the author of a dozen non-fiction books for children, including the Heeding the Call: Jewish Voices in America's Civil Rights Struggle, a 1999 National Jewish Book Award Winner. His books, aimed at pre-teens, delve into topics from the France's antisemitic Dreyfus Affair to the Holocaust. His most recent book is

Forged in Freedom
Shaping the Jewish-American Experience (Jewish Publication Society of America). The web site below lists all 18 of his books. Finkelstein's appearance at the SJHS conference is in conjunction with the Society's plans to create and distribute a bibliography of Southern Jewish History books geared to Juvenile Readers.