Director

Ashley Walters is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston. She completed her PhD in American and East European Jewish History with a PhD minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stanford University. She is currently working on her book, Intimate Radicals: East European Jewish Women and the Early Twentieth-century Anglo-American Imaginary, which explores how unconventional desires among leftist radicals helped produce a new cultural mythology of the East European Jewish woman in early-twentieth century America. She is also co-editing a collection of essays on Jewish women’s literary culture and gender politics in the US. At the College of Charleston, she teaches courses on modern and American Jewish history, Jews and gender, and the history of Jews and the American South.

Research Assistant

Leah Davenport is the newest research assistant at the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture. She is a sophomore at the College of Charleston and is majoring in Jewish Studies and Political Science. She recently joined the Pearlstine/Lipov research team after her studies sparked an interest in Jewish communities of the South, specifically in the Lowcountry, of which she is a native. Growing up in the Charleston area, Leah has had personal experience with several of the congregations and synagogues in South Carolina and hopes to utilize this as she continues the work that the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina and the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture is executing on the synagogues of South Carolina. She seeks to gain new knowledge of the state’s rural congregations and connect with these communities through her research. Leah is also currently serving as a Peer Facilitator for the Dancing Away Your Fear of Public Speaking First-Year Experience seminar this semester. She is currently planning to go on to law school and hopes that her research work with Pearlstine/Lipov will help get her there.