Spotlight: Emily Katz
Profile written by Alana Goldman, ’24, the Center’s Lori and Eric Sklut Undergraduate Intern for 2023-24.
Emily Katz is a teaching assistant professor in the department of American studies. She joined Carolina in fall 2023.
What is your favorite aspect or tradition of American Jewish culture?
How Jews have used humor to wrestle with what it means to be American on the public stage. It’s interesting to trace how Jews have grappled with Jewish and American identity over the decades, from vaudeville in the late 19th century to modern programs like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” and how shows have become more nuanced and complicated.
What drew you to study American Jewish culture?
I wanted to understand more about the context I live in as a Jewish American. I wanted to know what brought us all to this moment. There’s something particularly urgent about understanding our recent history and this place we call home.
Tell me about your current research project. What excites you about it?
I’m working on a biography of a branch of my father’s family, specifically my great-grandmother and her four siblings, two of whom were well-known reform rabbis in the mid-20th century. I’ve always been curious about this legendary part of my family’s history. I’m interested in exploring the stories families tell about themselves and digging into the historical sources. This was the first American-born generation, and I want to explore the roles they played, how the women saw themselves in relation to their brothers, and also their aspirations.
What is your favorite thing to teach in your classes?
In my Jewish American literature class, we could’ve spent hours parsing and pulling apart poems by Jewish American writers. Poetry can seem frightening for students who never liked studying it, and I enjoyed helping students understand that they already have the tools to analyze and enjoy poetry. It was liberating and empowering for everybody. In my Jewish American experience class, I do interlude classes after each unit as a way of refracting the ideas we have learned about. I encouraged students to think about how later generations came back to those historical moments and tried to wrestle with and understand them.
What do you hope students will take away from your classes?
I hope they try to understand the diversity and complexity of the Jewish American experience and I encourage students to hold differing ideas in their heads at the same time and understand that they can all be true.
I read that you learned Yiddish in graduate school — what is your favorite word?
I love the word feinschmecker, which means a fancy smeller, someone who is hoity-toity. It’s not the most beautiful or meaningful Yiddish word, but I find it pungent and interesting.
Written by Alana Goldman, ’24, the Center’s Lori and Eric Sklut Undergraduate Intern for 2023-24.
Photo: Emily Katz was reunited with grad student Morgan Morales this year. Years ago, Morales was an undergraduate student in Katz’s class at UC Irvine. Morales is now a Ph.D. candidate in the department of history and last year she was awarded the Center’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship.