RelPol 395 - Jewish Women and American Culture - A Guide to Religious Studies - Research Guides at Washington University in St. Louis

Reference Works - A Place to Begin

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women
In 2017, the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) embarked on the major project of updating, expanding, and redesigning Jewish Women in America: An historical encyclopedia. The resulting new edition represents the latest stage in the evolution of a foundational resource that has had a significant impact on students, scholars, and the general public for more than two decades.

Jewish Women in America: An historical encyclopedia by Paula E. Hyman & Deborah Dash Moore, Editors
Call Number: DS115.2 J49 1997 Olin Library Level 3 Stacks
ISBN: 0415919363
Publication Date: 1997
Encyclopedia of American Jewish History by Stephen H. Norwood & Eunice G. Pollack, Editors
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 1851096434
Publication Date: 2007
Written by the most prominent scholars in American Jewish history, this encyclopedia illuminates the varied experiences of America's Jews and their impact on American society and culture over three and a half centuries. American Jews have profoundly shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. Yet American history texts have largely ignored the Jewish experience. The Encyclopedia of American Jewish History corrects that omission. In essays and short entries written by 125 of the world's leading scholars of American Jewish history and culture, this encyclopedia explores both religious and secular aspects of American Jewish life. It examines the European background and immigration of American Jews and their impact on the professions and academic disciplines, mass culture and the arts, literature and theater, and labor and radical movements. It explores Zionism, antisemitism, responses to the Holocaust, the branches of Judaism, and Jews' relations with other groups, including Christians, Muslims, and African Americans. The encyclopedia covers the Jewish press and education, Jewish organizations, and Jews' participation in America's wars. In two comprehensive volumes, Encyclopedia of American Jewish History makes 350 years of American Jewish experience accessible to scholars, all levels of students, and the reading public.

Academic Journal Databases

EBSCO

America: History & Life (1964-)
A complete bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Published since 1964, the database comprises almost 400,000 bibliographic entries.
Gender Studies Database (1972- )
Combines Women’s Studies International and Men’s Studies databases with the coverage of sexual diversity issues. Covers the full spectrum of gender-engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Includes more than 921,000 records.
LGBTQ+ Source
Full text for 50 of the most important and historically significant LGBT journals, magazines and regional newspapers, as well as dozens of full text monographs. Full text for 50 of the most important and historically significant LGBT journals, magazines and regional newspapers, as well as dozens of full text monographs. Also includes comprehensive indexing and abstract coverage as well as a specialized LGBT Thesaurus containing over 6,400 terms.

ProQuest

GenderWatch
A full-text collection of international journals, magazines, newsletters, regional publications, special reports, and conference proceedings devoted to women's and gender issues. Over 31,000 full text articles from 115 publications and archival material. Updated quarterly. Learn more about this database.
Gerritsen Women's History Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs (1543-1945)
Drawn from the collection of Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen. Contains books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. Includes over 4,700 publications from continental Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand in 15 languages. Learn more about this database.

Open Access Websites

RAMBI – Index of Articles on Jewish Studies
founded by Dr. Issachar Joel in 1966, RAMBI is a selective bibliography of academic articles covering all of the fields of Jewish studies as well as the study of Eretz Israel and the State of Israel.

RAMBI is based largely on the collections of the National Library. The articles listed in RAMBI are collected from thousands of journals, in print or electronic, from collections of articles and from offprints sent by researchers.

RAMBI refers to articles in Hebrew, Latin or Cyrillic letters. The database is updated on a daily basis. By the end of 2013 RAMBI included about 350,000 records, from about 21,000 different sources.

Primary Sources

Jewish Life in America, 1654-1954
Primary sources addressing key topics such as the immigration process and evolution of early Jewish Settlements, differing strands of Judaism in America, Jewish schools and charitable institutions, and civil rights and minority rights issues.

American Jewish Committee Archives
Filled with more than a million documents and hundreds of movies and radio shows, the New York-based American Jewish Committee Archives house an extraordinary range of resources on the past century of American Jewish history.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
79 document projects with more than 2,400 documents, 32,000 pages of additional full-text documents, and 1,700 primary authors. It includes as well book, film and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.
Everyday Life and Women in America, c.1800-1920
Sources are drawn from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture, Duke University and the New York Public Library. Contains monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.
Independent Voices
A digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.