Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History and Director of Women’s & Gender Studies at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. She is the author of Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920 (NYU, 2005), Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880-1925 (Ivan R. Dee, 2007),  Ballet Class: An American History (Oxford, 2020), and, with Dianne Ashton, The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai (New York University Press, 2024). Her book Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940 (NYU, 2013) won the National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies