
Ari Y. Kelman
Jim Joseph Professor of Education and Jewish Studies and Associate Professor, by courtesy, of Religious Studies
Graduate School of Education
Web page: https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/aykelman
Bio
Professor Kelman's research focuses on the forms and practices of religious knowledge transmission. He holds a specific research interest in American Jewry.
He is the author of Shout to the Lord: Making Worship Music in Evangelical America (NYU 2018) and Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio (California, 2009). He is also the co-editor (with Jon Levisohn) of Beyond Jewish Identity (2019: Academic Studies Press), the editor of Is Diss a System?: A Milt Gross Comic Reader (NYU, 2010), co-author of Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary (Alban Institute, 2011). Together with research partners at Stanford and elsewhere, he maintains an active research agenda and publishes regularly in venues both scholarly and popular.
Academic Appointments
-
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education
-
Associate Professor (By courtesy), Religious Studies
Administrative Appointments
-
Director, Undergraduate Honors in Education Thesis Program (2019 - Present)
-
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University (2012 - Present)
-
Associate Director, American Religions in a Global Context (2019 - Present)
-
Director, BJPA@Stanford (2019 - Present)
-
Director, Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies (2012 - Present)
-
Affiliate, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (2012 - Present)
-
Affiliate, American Studies Program (2012 - Present)
-
Core Faculty, Center for Jewish Studies (2012 - Present)
-
Interim Director, Taube Center for Jewish Studies (2017 - 2018)
Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations
-
Editor, Jewish Social Studies (2020 - Present)
-
Chair, Network for Research in Jewish Education (2019 - Present)
-
Board Member, Network for Research in Jewish Education (2016 - 2019)
-
Board Member, Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (2015 - 2019)
-
Board Member, Association for Jewish Studies (2015 - 2018)
-
Associate Professor of American Studies, UC Davis (2009 - 2011)
-
Assistant Professor of American Studies, UC Davis (2006 - 2009)
-
Scholar-in-Residence, American Jewish Historical Society (2005 - 2006)
-
Historian, National Museum of American Jewish History (2003 - 2005)
Program Affiliations
-
American Studies
Professional Education
-
BA, UC Santa Cruz, Sociology (1994)
-
PhD, New York University, American Studies (2003)
Research Interests
-
Religion
-
Sociology
Current Research and Scholarly Interests
Professor Kelman's research focuses on the forms and practices of religious knowledge transmission. His work emerges at the intersection of sociocultural learning theory and scholarly/critical studies of religion. Methodologically, he draws on social scientific and historical approaches to the study of these phenomena.
His interests have drawn him to research phenomena as diverse as Yiddish radio, Evangelical worship music, Jewish online learning, release time programs, religious dictionaries, Jewish identity, ritual, Google algorithms about religion, Jewish students and antisemitism, citational research networks, campus chaplaincy, and the educational dimensions of the ongoing tension between church, state, and schooling. All of these organize around the question of how religious knowledge is constructed, encoded, transmitted, understood, and practiced.
At present, he as work on a handful of projects ranging from a synthetic work about Jewish education, the study of religious education in the post-war period, studies of Google's algorithmic definitions of religion, and intersections between AI and religion.
2022-23 Courses
- Learning Religion: How People Acquire Religious Commitments
AMSTUD 231X, EDUC 231, JEWISHST 291X, RELIGST 231X (Win) - Undergraduate Honors Seminar
EDUC 199A (Aut) - Undergraduate Honors Seminar
EDUC 199B (Win) - Undergraduate Honors Seminar
EDUC 199C (Spr) - Understanding Jews
AMSTUD 215, JEWISHST 215 (Aut) - Workshop in Religion and Education
EDUC 412, RELIGST 333X (Win, Spr) -
Independent Studies (9)
- Curricular Practical Training
EDUC 437 (Sum) - Directed Reading
EDUC 480 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Directed Reading in Education
EDUC 180 (Sum) - Directed Research
EDUC 490 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Honors Research
EDUC 140 (Win, Spr) - Individual Work
AMSTUD 195 (Win) - Individual Work for Graduate Students
RELIGST 389 (Aut, Spr) - Research in Jewish Studies
RELIGST 387 (Sum) - Supervised Internship
EDUC 380 (Win, Spr, Sum)
- Curricular Practical Training
-
Prior Year Courses
2021-22 Courses
- Proseminar 2
EDUC 325B (Win) - The Fourth R: Religion, Education and Schooling in America
MLA 353 (Spr) - Undergraduate Honors Seminar
EDUC 199A (Aut) - Undergraduate Honors Seminar
EDUC 199B (Win) - Understanding Jews
AMSTUD 215, JEWISHST 215 (Aut)
2020-21 Courses
- Proseminar 2
EDUC 325B (Win) - Undergraduate Honors Seminar
EDUC 199A (Aut) - Undergraduate Honors Seminar
EDUC 199B (Win) - Understanding Jews
AMSTUD 215, JEWISHST 215 (Win) - Worlds of Sound: Learning to Listen
THINK 59 (Aut)
2019-20 Courses
- Proseminar 2
EDUC 325B (Win) - The Fourth R: Religion, Education and Schooling in America
MLA 353 (Spr) - Undergraduate Honors Seminar
EDUC 199A (Aut) - Undergraduate Honors Seminar
EDUC 199B (Win) - Undergraduate Honors Seminar
EDUC 199C (Spr) - Understanding Jews
JEWISHST 215 (Win) - Worlds of Sound: Learning to Listen
THINK 59 (Win)
- Proseminar 2
Stanford Advisees
-
Doctoral Dissertation Reader (AC)
Caitlin Brust, jem Jebbia -
Postdoctoral Faculty Sponsor
Gabriella Gorsky, Ehud Tsemach -
Doctoral Dissertation Advisor (AC)
Rafa Kern, Alé Romero -
Master's Program Advisor
Meerim Nurlanbekova -
Doctoral (Program)
Jon Ball, Xavi Burgos, Jorge Garcia, Rafa Kern, Hannah Kober
All Publications
-
From Aesthetics to Experience: How Changing Conceptions of Prayer Changed the Sound of Jewish Worship
RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION
2020; 30 (1): 26–62
View details for DOI 10.1017/rac.2020.4
View details for Web of Science ID 000535284400002
-
Forum
RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION
2019; 29 (1): 1–35
View details for Web of Science ID 000460792900001
-
Learning and Learning about Religious Knowledge
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
2019
View details for DOI 10.1080/00344087.2019.1631952
View details for Web of Science ID 000479428100001
-
What We Talk About When We Talk About Research in Jewish Education: How References Produce a Field
JOURNAL OF JEWISH EDUCATION
2019; 85 (3): 240–67
View details for DOI 10.1080/15244113.2019.1639115
View details for Web of Science ID 000487231300002
- Beyond Jewish Identity edited by Levisohn, J. A. Academic Studies Press. 2019
- Shout to the Lord: Making Worship Music in Evangelical America New York University Press. 2018
-
Traditional Judaism: The Conceptualization of Jewishness in the Lives of American Jewish Post-Boomers
JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES
2017; 23 (1): 134–67
View details for DOI 10.2979/jewisocistud.23.1.05
View details for Web of Science ID 000412870600005
-
Learning History Through Culture The Krakow Jewish Festival
TEACHING AND LEARNING THE DIFFICULT PAST: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES
2019: 274–89
View details for Web of Science ID 000487736300019
-
Introduction, The Jewish 1968 and its Legacies
AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY
2018; 102 (1): 1–4
View details for DOI 10.1353/ajh.2018.0001
View details for Web of Science ID 000425604700001
- The Political Economy of Day Schools American Jewish History 2018; 102 (1): 59-84
- Shout to the Lord: Making Worship Music in Evangelical America NYU Press. 2018
-
The Political Economy of Day Schools
AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY
2018; 102 (1): 59–84
View details for DOI 10.1353/ajh.2018.0004
View details for Web of Science ID 000425604700004
-
Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters (Book Review)
JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY
2017; 104 (2): 527–28
View details for DOI 10.1093/jahist/jax252
View details for Web of Science ID 000417193600081
- Encountering the past in the present: An exploratory study of educational heritage tourism International Review of Education 2017; 63 (1): 51-70
- Traditional Judaism: The Conceptualization of Jewishness in the Lives of American Jewish Post-Boomers Jewish Social Studies 2017; 23 (1): 134-167
-
HOW COME BOYS GET TO KEEP THEIR NOSES (Book Review)
SHOFAR-AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES
2016; 35 (1): 119–20
View details for DOI 10.1353/sho.2016.0039
View details for Web of Science ID 000393335400006
-
Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Book Review)
MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
2016; 70 (4): 682–83
View details for Web of Science ID 000386540900018
-
Learning Across Church and State: Student Experience of a Released Time Program
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
2016; 111 (1): 49-74
View details for DOI 10.1080/00344087.2016.1124012
View details for Web of Science ID 000370675100003
-
Spirits Rejoice!: Jazz and American Religion. (Book Review)
JOURNAL OF POPULAR MUSIC STUDIES
2015; 27 (4): 530–32
View details for DOI 10.1111/jpms.12156
View details for Web of Science ID 000366578500013
-
The Present in Future Tense
JOURNAL OF JEWISH EDUCATION
2012; 78 (4): 302–4
View details for DOI 10.1080/15244113.2012.732764
View details for Web of Science ID 000217526100005