WILLIAM PENCAK is professor emeritus of history and Jewish studies (2012) at Penn State University. He currently serves as visiting scholar at the University of South Mobile and also previously taught at Ohio State University, Susquehanna University, and Gettysburg College. He received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1978. Pencak’s Jews and Gentiles in Early America, 1654-1800 (2005) was a runner up National Book Award for American Jewish History. His is under contract with Routledge to publish Rabbi Stephen Wise: The Voice of American Judaism in 2013. Pencak is also the author of a number of scholarly articles including “Jonas Phillips Levy: A Jewish Naval Captain in the Early Republic” in Pamela Nadell, Jonathan Sarna, and Lance Sussman, eds. New Essays in American Jewish History (2010) and “Jewish Elements in the Music of Giacomo Meyerbeer” SHOFAR (Fall 2013). He has been the recipient of the Wiener-Loewenstein Fellowship (2002) Rappaport Fellowship (2008), both from American Jewish Archives, and Mellon Bank Research Fellowship from the Huntington Library (2002-2003). He has also given numerous scholarly presentations including:
“Uriah Phillips Levy and Jonas Phillips Levy: Two Jewish Naval Captains in the Early Republic,” American Jewish Archives (2008), “The Statue of Judah Touro that was Never Erected,” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (2008)
Contact information: wap1@psu.edu; 814-359-9905; Visiting Scholar, Dept. of History, Univ, of South Alabama, Mobile, AL 36688
Topics: Early American Jews to 1800 – especially how the first Jews settled in Georgia: Georgian Jews in the Revolution; Washington, Adams, Jefferson and the Jews; Jewish Elements in the Music of Giacomo Meyerbeer; Rabbi Stephen S. Wise; Rabbi Wise, African Americans, and Jews: Southern Racism and German Anti-Semitism.
Fee: $300 plus expenses.