Debra Renee Kaufman (born April 2, 1941) is an American sociologist whose work focuses on feminist methodologies in the fields of the sociology of Jewry and Jewish history.^[1] Kaufman was the founder and former director of the Women’s Studies (later Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) and Jewish Studies programs at Northeastern University.^[2]

Background

Born Debra Renee Horowitz, and raised in Cleveland, Ohio in a poor immigrant Jewish community, she married her husband, Michael Kaufman, who would become a professor of English and American Literature. Debra Kaufman studied at the University of Michigan, earning her undergraduate and master's degrees. In 1975, Debra Kaufman received her PhD from Cornell University.^[2][3]

Kaufman served as an editor for several journals, including Nashim: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues and Contemporary Jewry.^[4]

Awards

• Marshall Sklare Award of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ)

Select publications

Books

• Achievement and Women: Challenging the Assumptions (with Barbara Richardson) (1981)
• Rachel’s Daughters: Newly Orthodox Jewish Women (1991)^[5]

Chapters

• Kaufman, D. R. (2005). The place of Judaism in American Jewish identity. In Cambridge companion to American Judaism (pp. 169–186).
• Kaufman, D. R. (2019). Paradoxical politics: Gender politics among newly orthodox Jewish women in the United States. In Identity Politics and Women (pp. 349–366). Routledge.

Journal articles

• Kaufman, D. R. (1978). Associational ties in academe: Some male and female differences. Sex Roles, 4, 9-21.
• Kaufman, D. R. (1985). Women who return to Orthodox Judaism: A feminist analysis. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 543–551.
• Baruch, G., & Kaufman, D. R. (1987). Interpreting the data: women, developmental research and the media. Journal of Thought, 53–57.
• Kaufman, D. R. (1989). Patriarchal women: A case study of newly orthodox Jewish women. Symbolic Interaction, 12(2), 299–314.
• Kaufman, D. R. (1993). My mother’s daughter my daughter’s mother: Intergenerational conflicts and decision making among newly orthodox Jewish women. Family Perspective 26(4): 461–476.
• Kaufman, D. R. (1996). The holocaust and sociological inquiry: A feminist analysis. Contemporary Jewry 17: 6–17.
• Kaufman, D. R. (1996). Rethinking, reflecting, rewriting: Teaching feminist methodology. The Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies, 18(2), 165–174.
• Kaufman, D. R. (1999). Embedded categories: Identity among Jewish young adults in the US. Race, Gender & Class, 76–87.
• Kaufman, D. R. (2001). Renaming violence. American Behavioral Scientist, 45(4), 654–667.
• Kaufman, D. R. (2010). The circularity of secularity: The sacred and the secular in some contemporary post-holocaust identity narratives. Contemporary Jewry 30: 119–139.
• Kaufman, D. R. (2014). Demographers on demography: The place of narrative in Jewish identity research, Contemporary Jewry 34, Guest Editor.
• Kaufman, D. R. (2014). Demographic storytelling: The importance of being narrative. Contemporary Jewry 34: 61–73.
• Kaufman, D. R. (2017). Narrating Jewish identity: A response to bruce phillips. Contemporary Jewry 37: 399–403.
• Kaufman, D. R. (2022). Studying the World with us in it. Contemporary Jewry 42: 233–236.