Shaul Kelner

Background

About Shaul Kelner

Shaul Kelner is Professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of the National Jewish Book Award-winning 'A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews'(NYU Press, 2024.) His first book,'Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage and Israeli Birthright Tourism'(NYU Press, 2010), won the Association for Jewish Studies’ Jordan Schnitzer Book Award was named Honorable Mention for the American Sociological Association Culture Section’s Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book. Prof. Kelner has been a Fellow of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute for Advanced Studies and the University of Michigan’s Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, as well as a visiting scholar in Tel Aviv University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He has served as a board member of the Association for Jewish Studies and the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry. He received his Ph.D in 2002 from the CUNY Graduate Center, which he attended as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He specializes in the sociology of American Jews. His research focuses on transnational Jewish solidarity, and analyzes how culture and politics intersect to shape Jewish life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vanderbilt’s College of Arts and Science recognized him with an Innovative Teaching Award for Creating Engaging In-Person Learning Environments.