Rachel Kranson

Rachel Kranson is an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where she serves as Director of the Jewish Studies Program and is affiliated with the Department of Religious Studies. Her academic work intersects modern Jewish history, Judaism in America, and gender/sexuality studies, with a focus on religious freedom, reproductive politics, and Jewish countercultural movements.

• PhD from New York University
• Core faculty member: Jewish Studies Program and Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies Program

Her research examines Holocaust memory, gendered religious practices, and Jewish identity formation in urban contexts. Recent publications analyze postwar American Jewish anxieties around materialism, youth activism, and reproductive ethics. A 2017 monograph on upward mobility in postwar America received an honorable mention from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.

Award highlights include a Pitt Seed Grant for the "Religyinz" project (2019-2020), fellowships from the American Jewish Historical Society (2018) and University of Michigan (2013-2014), and editorial leadership at the Journal of Jewish Identities. She co-organized a reproductive health conference in 2019 and contributed to scholarship on Jewish women's roles in mid-20th century America.

• Book Review Editor, Journal of Jewish Identities
• Dietrich School Faculty Research Award for reproductive health conference (2019)