Ayelet Brinn, assistant professor of Judaic studies and history in the College of Arts and Sciences, is this year’s recipient of the Belle K. Ribicoff Junior Faculty Prize. This annual honor recognizes an outstanding junior faculty member in a tenure-track position who demonstrates combined excellence in teaching, scholarly or creative activity, and service.
Brinn is an educator, researcher, and author whose work is focused on gender, the Yiddish language, and popular culture as they relate to Jewish and American history. She is often praised by both students and colleagues for a particularly innovative style of teaching and an ability to bring history to life in such a way as to make a study of its impact on the present day as authentic and absorbing as possible.
“As an historian, Ayelet focuses on re-creating a narrative from primary sources, and in class, she actively engages her students in these explorations,” says James E. R. McDonald, associate professor and chair of the Physics Department. “She frequently tries new ideas and techniques in her teaching, and in the process consistently makes a significant contribution to the University community.”
With a PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania and master’s degrees in history and library science from Indiana University, Brinn joined the University of Hartford faculty in 2022 as an assistant professor of modern Jewish history and associate director of the Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies. Previously, she held fellowships at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and at Fordham University and Columbia University.
Her first book, A Revolution in Type: Gender and the Making of the American Yiddish Press, was published by New York University Press in November 2023 and named a National Jewish Book Award finalist. She had also been awarded a summer fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Brinn is currently writing a second book, which will examine U.S. censorship of the Yiddish press during World War I. She has also published articles in such prestigious journals as Studies in American Jewish Literature and American Jewish History on topics that include Jewish American journalism during the beginning of the 20th century and female journalists in the American Yiddish press.