Beth S. Wenger Named Associate Dean for Graduate Studies

Beth S. Wenger, Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor and Chair of History, has been named Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the School of Arts & Sciences, effective July 1, 2019. In this role, she will oversee the School’s doctoral programs, which take place in 31 graduate groups and enroll approximately 1,350 students.

“I am delighted to announce Beth's appointment,” says Steven J. Fluharty, Dean and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience. “An eminent historian and educator, she has a strong record as an academic leader who is committed to student excellence and well-being.”

A scholar of modern and American Jewish history, Wenger is the author of History Lessons: The Creation of American Jewish Heritage; New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise, (which was awarded the Salo Baron Prize in Jewish History); and The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America (a National Jewish Book award finalist). She has co-edited several anthologies and authored dozens of scholarly articles.

Wenger is an Elected Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the recipient of the History department’s Richard S. Dunn Distinguished Teaching Award. She is also deeply engaged in public history; she was one of four founding historians who helped to create the core exhibition at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and served as a consulting historian to the 2008 PBS series The Jewish Americans. She has also served as a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians.

Wenger has served as Chair of the Department of History since 2012. She was Director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2005 to 2013. Among her many Penn affiliations, she is a Resident Senior Fellow in the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society and Robert A. Fox Leadership Program, a member of the Religious Studies graduate group, and a member of the Faculty Advisory Board of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. She also serves as Chair of the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History in New York.

She will succeed Ralph Rosen, Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Classical Studies, who has been serving as Interim Associate Dean since last August.

“I know the Arts & Sciences community joins me in expressing gratitude to Ralph for his extraordinary citizenship and dedication to our graduate education mission,” says Fluharty.