Upcoming events:
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Lecture ▪ November 9, 2026 ▪ 12:00 pm
Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Seminar Series – “No One Wants a Fella with a Social Disease: American Jews, Medical Marginalization, and the AIDS Epidemic”
Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis University (ONLINE!)
Details: At HBI, Hannah Zaves-Greene is investigating how American Jews responded politically, legally, and socially to the AIDS epidemic in the US, and how these responses influenced legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) and HIPAA (1996). Her research combines methodological and theoretical approaches that integrate American and American Jewish history, interweaving them with disability, race and ethnicity, legal studies, and gender and sexuality.
Register here: https://brandeis.zoom.us/meeting/register/K3gcnI2tS2qQgr-NCJ_Ymw#/registration
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Book talk ▪ November 11, 2026 ▪ 6:30 pm
Book talk: Able to Be American (in conversation with Sarah Imhoff)
American Jewish Historical Society, Center for Jewish History (ONLINE!)
Details: Author Hannah E. Zaves-Greene joins us to discuss her new book, Able to Be American: Disability in US Immigration Policy and the American Jewish Response with Sarah Imhoff. Register for free: https://ajhs.org/events/book-talk-able-to-be-american/
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Launch party ▪ November 17, 2026 ▪ 7:30 pm
Able to Be American Launch Party in Brooklyn!
To be announced (Brooklyn, NY)
Details: Stay tuned for more details!
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Book talk ▪ November 30, 2026 ▪ 12:30 pm
Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversation Series: Able to Be American (in conversation with Lisa Fishbayn Joffe)
Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis University (ONLINE!)
Details: In Able to Be American: Disability in U.S. Immigration Law and the American Jewish Response (University of North Carolina Press, November 17, 2026), Hannah Zaves-Greene explores the complex, even fraught, gender dynamics between American Jewish women and men as they collaborated to aid immigrants and contest discriminatory immigration policies at the turn of the 19th century. Women immigration advocates like Sadie American and Cecilia Razovsky of the National Council of Jewish Women underscored gender’s profound significance in determining immigrants’ admissibility, recognizing rules and regulations that left men relatively untouched, but threatened and endangered women and girls. Their contributions illuminate how leading American Jewish women conceived of the meaning and implications of socioeconomic and legal belonging in the United States during its greatest wave of immigration.
HBI is delighted to have provided Dr. Zaves-Greene with a Research Award in 2021 in support of this work.
Register here: https://brandeis.zoom.us/meeting/register/mkneNkYiQuOooEQwv4RURw
Past events:
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2026 Annual Jewish Colonie Lecture: “Welcoming the Stranger? American Jews, Disability, and Citizenship in the United States”
Departments of History and Judaic Studies, SUNY Albany (Albany, NY)
2026 Annual Jewish Colonie Lecture featuring Dr. Hannah Zaves-Greene, who will present “Welcoming the Stranger? American Jews, Disability, and Citizenship in the United States.” Drawing on her research in American Jewish history, disability studies and legal history, Dr. Zaves-Greene will explore the intersections of disability, immigration and citizenship in the United States. The lecture is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be served. Sponsored by UAlbany’s Judaic Studies Program and Department of History. Details: https://events.albany.edu/event/2026-annual-jewish-colonie-lecture
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Healthcare and Religion series: “Subjectively Defective: American Jews, Disability, and Belonging in the Early 20th Century”
Institute for Bioethics, University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA)
Continuing medical education credit will be available for those in attendance. Co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, Jewish Studies Program, and Palliative and Supportive Institute Catalog of Opportunities Event
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American Body Politics – “Healthy Bodies” (in conversation with Anthony Petro)
Moderator: Jamie Marsella (University of Toronto) What does it mean to be healthy? Are we responsible for the health of others? Are we responsible for our own? The concept of health in the United States is slippery, built on an ever-shifting foundation of scientific, religious, and moral ideas. As the Covid-19 pandemic made painfully clear, moments of health crisis surface competing visions of health, revealing the ways our existing systems of care ignore the needs of the disabled, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. This conversation brings together historians of religion, science, and sexuality in the twentieth century to situate our current moment in a longer history of health and disability in the United States as both a scientific and religious question.
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American Body Politics series: “Healthy Bodies” (in conversation with Anthony Petro)
Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, Columbia University (New York City)
Moderator: Jamie Marsella (University of Toronto) What does it mean to be healthy? Are we responsible for the health of others? Are we responsible for our own? The concept of health in the United States is slippery, built on an ever-shifting foundation of scientific, religious, and moral ideas. As the Covid-19 pandemic made painfully clear, moments of health crisis surface competing visions of health, revealing the ways our existing systems of care ignore the needs of the disabled, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. This conversation brings together historians of religion, science, and sexuality in the twentieth century to situate our current moment in a longer history of health and disability in the United States as both a scientific and religious question.
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“No One Wants a Fella with a Social Disease”: American Jews, Civil Rights, and the AIDS Epidemic
American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati, OH)
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Graduate seminar: “Religion, Gender, and Disability Studies” (Prof: Julia Watts Belser)
Department of Religion, Georgetown University (Washington, DC)
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Documentary: “Disposable Humanity” Post-film conversation with disability studies scholar David T. Mitchell and film director Cameron Mitchell
Boston Jewish Film Festival (Boston, MA)
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Immigration, Disability, and Global Health
Global Health program, Georgetown University School of Medicine (Washington, DC)
for medical residents in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation program
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“The Body Politic: Boston Jews, Disability, and US Immigration Policy”
New England Jewish Archive, Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center (Boston, MA)
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“Able to Be American”
MAVCOR Sensory Cultures of Religion Research Group, Yale University (New Haven, CT)
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Graduate seminar: “Variety and Standardization in American Religious History” (Profs: Sally Promey and Jamil Drake)
Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University (New Haven, CT)
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“American Jews, Immigration, and Disability”
Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, PA)
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“On the Margins: How Lillian Wald Established Public Health Nursing” for the CLAL Rabbinic Fellowship
Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
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“Problematizing ‘Poor Physique’: American Jews Contest the Constraints of the American Body Politic”
Stephen A Schwartzman Main Branch, New York Public Library (New York City)
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Keynote Address, Trans Day of Remembrance
Bet Am Shalom Synagogue (White Plains, NY)
The process of dying, Jewish tradition suggests, is not complete until the last living person forgets your name. What does that mean for those of us whose true name – or even identity – is not openly known to the community? Hannah Zaves-Greene, visiting professor of Jewish Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, will explore historical and modern rituals of Jewish mourning, including a discussion of how these practices, typically centered around the twin themes of history and memory, become more complicated when mourning members of a marginalized group.
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“The New Jew? Jessie Sampter, Queer, Disabled, Zionist”
Center for Disability Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Jerusalem, Israel)
Respondent for book talk by Sarah Imhoff
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October 2022
“Grappling with Gender and Sexuality in Jewish History” (host)
Sarah Lawrence College (Bronxville, NY)
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August 2022
“Disability and the History of Jewish Immigration to the United States”
The Disability History Association Podcast (online)
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May 2021
“Embodying Liberty: American Jewish Attorneys and the Case for Humanizing Public Charge”
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Center for Jewish History (New York City)
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October 2020
“American Discourses on the Body”
Making of Modern Society program, Cooper Union (New York City)
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November 2019
“Treating the Cause: Lillian Wald’s Public Health and Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Movements in the United States”
Glucksman Ireland House, New York University (New York City)
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October 2018
“‘On the Other Hand…’: Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman in Turn-of-the-Century Russia”
Department of History, New York University (New York City)