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Religion faculty member Hannah Zaves-Greene has been selected for a National Endowment for the Humanities long-term research grant. The flagship research fellowship at the New York Public Library, the yearlong grant supports her current book project, Able to Be American: Disability in U.S. Immigration Law and the American Jewish Response. Zaves-Greene is one of only two scholars selected each year for that fellowship.
Aside from her work on Able to be American and the courses she teaches at Sarah Lawrence, Zaves-Greene is currently consulting for the National Museum of Immigration on Ellis Island as it embarks on redesigning its entire exhibit structure. The museum called upon Zaves-Greene to advise them regarding the ever-present role of health and disability in immigration history, particularly as a disqualifying factor for prospective immigrants. As she explains: “My research challenges the dominant historical narrative by explicitly incorporating disability into American and American Jewish history. I reconceptualize disability to encompass physical and mental impairment, economic status, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality, thereby revealing how the federal government legally codified these extensive “disabling” categories to narrowly define citizenship and national belonging in the United States.”