Headshot of Adam Mendelsohn

Adam Mendelsohn

Associate Professor in Historical Studies, University of Cape Town

Biography

Much of Adam Mendelsohn’s work focuses on how Jews adapted to living within English-speaking lands in the nineteenth century. His current project explores the experience of Jews in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. Previously he compared the economic trajectory of Jews in the United States and the British Empire in The Rag Race. Adam is co-editor of the journal American Jewish History. He curated the exhibitions The First Jewish Americans at the New-York Historical Society and By Dawn’s Early Light at the Princeton University Museum of Art. Adam directs the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. The center, the only of its kind in South Africa, conducts research focused on Jews in South Africa, past and present.