Diane Wolf

Research Interests

• Gender and Family Studies
• Fieldwork Methodology
• Children of Immigrants; Memory and Trauma; Jewish Studies

The thread that links all my research and publications is that of family dynamics amidst structural transformations, usually with a focus on gender.   My book, Beyond Anne Frank:  Jewish Families in Postwar Holland (U.C. Press, 2007) analyzed childhood memory, family dynamics and trauma during and after war and genocide.   I recently published a chapter for a methods book on Children in Religion that focuses on the issue of children's agency as well as children and memory.  I am working on an article concerning the socio-historical parameters of "the best interest of the child" in relation to the case study of orphaned Jewish children in the Netherlands after WWII.    My interest in the interrelationships between identity, memory and trauma is also reflected in a book I co-edited, also in 2007:   When Sociology Confronts the Holocaust:  Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas (Duke University Press).   Yen Le Espiritu and I are working on a piece focused on a critical juxtaposition of the Holocaust and the Vietnam War in American cultural memory.  We will continue that project by considering children of Holocaust survivors and children of Vietnam refugees.   My other project is also collaborative and comparative, on the relationship between secularism and circumcision among contemporary secular American and Israeli Jews:  does cultural change affect this very gendered practice and if so, how?

Recent Publications

• Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland. UC Press (2007)
• Sociology Confronts  the Holocaust: Identities and Memories in Jewish Diasporas.   Co-edited with Judith Gerson.  Duke Univ. Press (2007)
• Feminizing Global Research Globalizing Feminist Research: Methods and  Practice Under Globalization in Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory  and Praxis. (2nd ed) Sage Publications.  2011.  (With Jennifer Bickham Mendez).