Skip to content Skip to navigation

Photo of Stanford GSE Faculty

Kelman, Ari Y.

Ari Y. Kelman
Ari Y. Kelman
Academic Title 
Associate Professor
Other Titles 

The Jim Joseph Chair in Education and Jewish Studies

Member of the Center for Jewish Studies

Associate Professor of Religious Studies (by courtesy)

Affiliate of the American Studies Program

Affiliate of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity

Contact Information
(650) 723-0792
CU 323
by appointment
Program Affiliations 
SHIPS (PhD): Economics of Education
SHIPS (PhD): History of Education
SHIPS (PhD): Social Sciences in Education
SHIPS (PhD): Sociology of Education
(MA) LDT
Education and Jewish Studies
Research Interests 
Alternative Schooling
Civic Education
Cultural Studies
Education and Migration
Ethnography
History of Education
Identity
Multiculturalism
Music Education
Private Schools
Religion
Social Networks
Sociology of Culture
Sociology of Education

Ari is completing a book that explores the culture of contemporary evangelical worship music. The book examines how songwriters, worship leaders, and music industry professionals understand the role of songs as both vehicles for and practices of faith and identity.

He is also writing a collection of essays entitled "Learning to be Jewish," that takes a case study approach to questions about how people learn to be Jewish. The book will take an interdisciplinary approach to a variety of sites from Fiddler on the Roof to the Krakow Jewish Festival. "Learning to be Jewish" approaches its subjects with a sense that much of how people understand themselves in relation to Jewish communities, beliefs, practices, and texts is learned well beyond formal and informal educational structures.

Ari is interested in research at the intersection of Education and Jewish Studies, with an emphasis on the myriad ways in which people cultivate ethnic and religious identities and practices. His research focuses on questions of culture in all its manifestations including the material, aural, visual, and ideological. He is the coordinator of the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies.

He is the author of Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio (California, 2009), the editor of Is Diss a System?: A Milt Gross Comic Reader (NYU, 2010), and a co-author of Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary (Alban Institute, 2011). He is also the author of a number of articles about contemporary Jewish identity and culture, among other things

PhD (American Studies): New York University (2003)

BA (Sociology): UC Santa Cruz (1994)

Associate Professor of American Studies at UC Davis: 2009 - 2011

Assistant Professor of American Studies at UC Davis: 2006 - 2009

Scholar-in-Residence, American Jewish Historical Society: 2005 - 2006

Historian, National Museum of American Jewish History: 2003 - 2005