Dr. Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, where she teaches courses in American History and Women’s and Gender Studies. She is the author of Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920 (NYU Press, 2005), Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880-1925 (Ivan R. Dee, 2007), and Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940 (NYU Press, 2013), which won the National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies. Melissa earned her BA from Goucher College and her PhD from Rutgers University, and has been the recipient of numerous academic honors, including fellowships and prizes from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Schlesinger Library on American Women at Harvard University, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and, most recently, the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University.