Gerald Sorin

Sorin earned a B.A. at Columbia College in 1962, an M.A. at Wayne State University in 1964, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1969.

Sorin started teaching in 1965 at SUNY New Paltz, where he specialized in American social and political history and culture, and taught a wide variety of courses, including several on slavery and the coming of the Civil War. His first two books were The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study in Political Radicalism (1970) and Abolitionism: A New Perspective (1972). In the late 1970s, he pursued Jewish studies as a post-doctoral student at YIVO, the Max Weinreich Institute for Jewish Research. He became the Director of the Jewish Studies Program at SUNY New Paltz in 1983, the Chair of the History Department in 1986, and was the founder of the Louis and Mildred Resnick Institute for the Study of Modern Jewish Life in 1989, which he continues to direct.[1]

He now writes extensively on Jewish themes, focusing primarily on movements for social justice and on post-WWII Jewish American literature. His biography of the New York Intellectual, democratic Socialist, and Yiddishist, Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent (2002), won the National Jewish Book Award in History in 2003,[2] and was a New York Times “Notable Book” in the same year.[3] Sorin’s book on one of America’s most prolific and politically controversial writers, Howard Fast: Life and Literature in the Left Lane, was published by Indiana University Press in November 2012.[4]

He has also written collective biographies including, The New York Abolitionists; The Prophetic Minority: American Jewish Immigrant Radicals (1985); and The Nurturing Neighborhood (1990), which focused on the communal values and socialist orientation that influenced Jewish boys growing up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in the 1940s. This book was followed by A Time for Building: American Jewish Immigration, The Third Migration, 1880-1920, which is part of the acclaimed five-volume series The Jewish People in America, edited by Henry Feingold, and was judged “a thoroughly engaging, carefully researched, and professionally impressive synthesis.”[5]

Sorin’s other work, includes Tradition Transformed: The Jewish Experience in America (1997) and more than 200 articles, essays, and reviews which have appeared in more than two dozen scholarly journals, and in The Forward, Haaretz, Congress Monthly, Newsday, The Jewish Reader, and JBooks. He has written eight books, several of which and collectively have been critically admired and recognized by honors and awards. In addition to the National Jewish Book Award in History, Sorin received the Saul Viener Prize for the best book in Jewish American History, 2001-2002.[6] He was also the recipient of The Lee Max Friedman Medal, 2006, awarded by the American Jewish Historical Society for a lifetime of outstanding service and scholarly contribution to American Jewish studies.[7] In 2013, his Howard Fast: Life and Literature in the Left Lane (2012) won the National Jewish Book Award in Biography[8] and a silver medal for biography from Independent Publisher Awards (IPPY).[9]

Sorin has also taught American Studies in the Netherlands at the University of Utrecht’s School of Journalism in 1992, and at Nijmegen University in 1998 as the Fulbright Association’s John Adams Distinguished Chair of American Studies; he continues to serve on the Executive Board of the American Jewish Historical Society[10] and on the Managing Editorial Board of American Jewish History.[11]

• National Jewish Book Award in Biography, 2013[12]
• Silver medal for biography from Independent Publisher Awards (IPPY)
• Lee Max Friedman Award Medal, 2006
• National Jewish Book Award in History, 2003[8]
• Saul Viener Prize for Best Book in American Jewish History, 2002-2003
• New York Times, Notable Book, 2003
• Fulbright Scholar Program appointment, 1998