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WVU grad wins national prize for book on Jewish immigrants in Appalachia
A book by a West Virginia University graduate has won a national prize for the greatest recent contribution to Southern Jewish history.
WVU alumna Deborah Weiner, a research historian at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore, was awarded the Southern Jewish Historical Society’s Book Prize for “Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History.”
The 2006 book explores the role of Jewish immigrants during the Appalachian coal boom of the 1880s-1920s. It is the first extended study of Jews in Appalachia and was Weiner’s dissertation for her doctoral degree from the history department in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at WVU.
Weiner’s book was selected for the top prize from among 11 books published during 2003-06 throughout the nation. She was recognized at the historical society’s annual conference this month in Washington, D.C.
“Deborah Weiner’s exemplary study of Jewish life in Appalachia presents a carefully researched examination of the texture of Jewish experience within the varied settings that defined the different coalfield communities in which Appalachian Jews found their homes,” said Karla Goldman, chair of the society’s book prize subcommittee. “Her work offers students of Appalachia an important window into the rich diversity that characterized these communities.”
The book also provides students of Southern Jewish life a strong analytical model of how to think about the meaning of place in shaping distinctive Jewish identities as they emerged amid the varied social, economic, political, racial and religious contexts that Jews encountered in this region, Goldman noted.
In addition to her work as a research historian, Weiner is also director of Historic Jonestown Inc., a consortium of cultural institutions, community groups and businesses based in Baltimore’s Jonestown neighborhood.
While a graduate student in the WVU Department of History, she was awarded the prestigious Swiger Fellowship, which provides students with a full tuition waiver and $12,000 per year.
The book and more information are available online at http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/28chk2zr9780252030949.html.