As a member of the religion department at Haverford College, I teach a wide range of courses in modern Jewish thought and culture, together with material studies in religion.  My research focuses on Jewish conceptions of identity, authority, authenticity, and material conceptions of self.  I have published three books, Moses Hess and Modern Jewish Identity (2001),  Abraham Geiger’s Liberal Judaism: Personal Meaning and Religious Authority (2006), and Material Culture and Jewish Thought in America (2010), all with Indiana University Press. I am currently finishing a manuscript exploring how  American Jewish thinkers and texts deploy visual discourse to make claims about religious authenticity (tentatively titled: Visual Authenticity in American Jewish Thought).