Hazel Gates Woodruff Cottage
COTT 207
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Samira K. Mehta is an Associate听Professor of Women and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies. Her research and teaching focus on the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the United States. Her first book,听听(University of North Carolina Press, 2018) was a National Jewish book award finalist. Oprah Daily called her second book,听听(Beacon Press, 2023) 鈥渢he epitome of a book meeting a moment.鈥�
Mehta鈥檚 current book,听God Bless the Pill? Sexuality, Contraception, and American Religion听examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant voices in competing moral logics of contraception, population control, and eugenics from the mid-twentieth century to the present.听God Bless the Pill听is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press. Mehta is also the Principal Investigator on听Jews of Color: Histories and Futures, funded with a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. She also is beginning an academic monograph on Jews of color in the United States for Princeton University Press.
She is the co-chair of the North American Religions Program Unit of the American Academy of Religion and the co-editor of the Feminist Studies in Religion Blog. She is also on the academic advisory board of the Jewish Women's Archive. Mehta is excited to step into the role of series editor for NYU Press's North American Religion series in the Spring of 2025.
Mehta has been a Research Associate in Harvard Divinity School鈥檚 Women鈥檚 Studies in Religion Program and has held fellowships from the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Sloan Foundation鈥檚 Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life, the American Jewish Archives, and the Northeastern Regional Fellowship Consortium, among others.
Mehta鈥檚 courses include Jewish Feminisms: From Labor Marches to Women鈥檚 Marches; Religion and Reproductive Politics in the United States; Gender Justice, Food; and Sex, Politics and Religion in the U.S.
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Books:
(Beacon Press, 2023)
The Racism of People Who Love you听has just been selected as one of听!
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(University of North Carolina Press, 2018)
2018 National Jewish Book Award, American Jewish Studies, Jewish Book Council
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Recent articles:
鈥淎sian American Jews, Race, and Religious Identity,鈥� Journal of the American Academy of Religion (forthcoming), available through Advance Access at .
听鈥淭he Changing Jewish Family: Jewish Communal Responses to Interfaith and Same-Sex Marriage,鈥澨齱ith Brett Krutzsch. American Jewish History听104, no. 4 (2020): 553鈥�577.听
鈥淐hristmas in the Room: Gender, Conflict, and Compromise in Multi-Religious Domestic Space,鈥� Religions (2020): 11(6), 281.
鈥淧rescribing the Diaphragm: Protestants, Jews, Catholics, and a Changing Culture of Contraception,鈥� American Religion 1, no 2 (2020): 27-52.
鈥淵ou are Jewish if You Want to Be: The Limits of Identity in a World of Multiple Religious Practices,鈥� in Beyond Jewish Identity, eds. Jon Levisohn and Ari Y. Kelman (Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2019), 17-35.
鈥淔amily Planning is a Christian Duty: Religion, Population Control, and the Pill in the 1960s,鈥� in Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the 20th Century United States, eds. Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather White (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 152-169.
鈥淐hrismukkah: Multicultural Millennialism,鈥� Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 25, no. 1 (2015): 82-109.
Recent interviews:
WGST Professor Mehta interviewed on KCRW Life Examined podcast:听Defining life and personhood: What science, philosophy, and religion have to say
Professor Mehta featured in CU Boulder Today:听鈥�Untraditional鈥� Hanukkah celebrations are often full of traditions for Jews of color
Professor Mehta's 听