Keren McGinity

Keren R. McGinity is an internationally recognized gender historian who specializes in American Jews and intermarriage. Presently, Dr. McGinity is a research associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University. Prior to joining the HBI, she was an associate research scientist at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis and a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan’s Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, where she was also the inaugural Mandell L. Berman Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Contemporary American Jewish Life. Dr. McGinity earned her Ph.D. from Brown University where she subsequently held an appointment as a visiting assistant professor of history. Her pioneering book, Still Jewish: A History of Women and Intermarriage in America (NYU Press), was selected as a finalist for the 2009 National Jewish Book Award. Dr. McGinity’s new book is titled Marrying Out: Jewish Men, Intermarriage and Fatherhood  (Indiana University Press). Interweaving contemporary ethnography with traditional archival sources and including an analysis of interfaith romance in popular culture, this work significantly broadens the understanding of intermarried Jewish men by elucidating the meanings behind their choices and the Christian women who marry them. Dr. McGinity also runs www.loveandtradition.com, which features resources and conversations about intermarriage in the Jewish community.