Sharon Musher (Stockton University) Presents: Exploding the Canon: Building Inclusive American Jewish Intellectual Traditions

Depending on how it is defined, intellectual history can be a narrow occupation, confined by those who have access to traditional learning and the resources to engage in it. This has historically led to the creation of canons that often exclude women and members of the working class, among others. This talk suggests four models for creating more inclusive American Jewish intellectual traditions. It considers a contributory model, a communalist approach, using Jewishness as a category of historical analysis, and historicizing the evolution and dissemination of American Jewish ideas. In this way, it urges the broadest possible conception of what it means to be American, Jewish, and intellectual.

Sharon Ann Musher is Professor of History at Stockton University. She writes and teaches social, cultural, and oral history with a focus on the New Deal, Jewish women, and motherhood. Her most recent book Promised Lands: Hadassah Kaplan and the Legacy of American Jewish Women in Early Twentieth Century Palestine (New York University Press, 2025) draws on the records of her grandmother, a daughter of Mordecai Kaplan – founder of Reconstructionism. It shows how travel to Palestine in the interwar period shaped a cohort of American Jewish women who went on to center Zionism in American Jewish institutions and communities. Promised Lands was selected as one of the Jewish Women’s Archive’s Book Picks and also twice for Hadassah Magazine’s Shabbat Bookshelf. Sharon is also the author of Democratic Art: The New Deal’s Influence on American Culture, which traces a range of aesthetic visions that flourished during the 1930s to outline the successes, shortcomings, and lessons of the golden age of government funding for the arts. Beyond academia, Sharon is on the boards of the Jewish Publication Society and the Living New Deal. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, two of her three daughters, and her dog.