Research

Morrow-Spitzer’s book project, tentatively titled Worthy Citizens: Jewish Politics and the Making of the Modern American State, 1789-1933, explores the evolving nature of Jewish citizenship in the United States. Overturning conventional narratives about American Jewish political belonging, the project argues that Jewish citizenship was not inevitably secured at the nation’s founding but rather shifted over time and shaped by the ever-changing relationship between American Jews and the modern state.

Jacob is also working on a public facing project… IRO… using ArcGIS… Certificate in ArcGIS…

Selected Publications

Peer-reviewed journal publications:

• “The ‘Theoretical’ Jew Versus the ‘Southern’ Jew: Black Perceptions of Jewish Whiteness in the Nineteenth-Century American South,” American Jewish History 106, No. 1 (January 2022): 31-54.

• “Free From Proscription and Prejudice: Politics and Race in the Election of One Jewish Mayor in Late Reconstruction Louisiana,” Southern Jewish History 22 No. 1 (October 2019): 5-42.

Peer-reviewed translations:  

• “Vos I. I. Zinger Hot Gezen In Di Neger Kabareys In Harlem” (Forverts, 1932). (“What I.J. Singer Saw in the Black Cabarets in Harlem”) In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies (May 2024), https://ingeveb.org/texts-and-translations/cabarets. Translated from Yiddish.

  • (An accompanying essay to this translation can be found here)

Book reviews and review essays:

• Book review of Shari Rabin, The Jewish South: An American History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025). Reviewed for Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 25 no. 2 (2026).

• Book review of Jonathan Karp, ed. Beyond Whiteness: Revisiting Jews in Ethnic America (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2023). Reviewed for American Jewish History 108 no. 4 (October 2024).

• Book review of Ellen Eisenberg, ed., Jewish Identities in the American West: Relational Perspectives (Waltham, Ma: Brandeis University Press, 2022). Reviewed for Annals of Wyoming: The Wyoming History Journal 95 (Winter 2023).

• Book review of Peter M. Wolf, The Sugar King: Leon Godchaux: A New Orleans Legend, His Creole Slave, and His Jewish Roots (New York: Bayou Editions, 2022). Reviewed for Southern Jewish History 26 (Fall 2023).

• Review essay, “Memoirs and Archives: Celebrating the Jews of Atlanta,” of Janice Rothschild Blumberg, What’s Next?: Southern Dreams, Jewish Deeds and the Challenge of Looking Back While Moving Forward (Baltimore: Bartleby Press, 2022); Jeremy Katz, ed. The Jewish Community of Atlanta (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2021); Catherine Lewis, Jeremy Katz, and Anna Tucker, The Temple: The First 150 Years (Atlanta: The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, 2020). Reviewed in Southern Jewish History 25 (Fall 2022).

Selected Research Fellowships and Awards

Year-Long Fellowships

• Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Association for Jewish Studies (2025-26)

• Sid and Ruth Lapidus Graduate Research Fellowship, Center for Jewish Studies, (2024-25)

Short-Term Fellowships

• John Morton Blum Fellowship for Graduate Research in American History and Culture, Yale University (2024)

• Summer Fellowship, Feinstein Center for American Jewish History, Temple University (2024)

• Lawrence J. Kanter Research Grant, Southern Jewish Historical Society (2024)

• Charleston Research Fellowship, Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture, College of Charleston (2024)

• Graduate Research Award, Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, Brandeis University (2023)

• Fein & Lapidus Fellowship, American Jewish Historical Society (2022)

• Graduate Student Grant, American Academy of Jewish Research (2022)

• Starkoff Fellowship, American Jewish Archives (2021)

• Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (German), U.S. Dept. of Ed. (2020)

Awards

• Edwin W. Small Prize for outstanding work in American history, Yale University (2026)

• Rose Fellowship, Yale University (2025)

• Montgomery History Award, History Department, Tulane University (2018)

• Walter S. Stern 1905 Memorial Medal (best thesis on American government in Political Science, Economics, or History), Tulane University (2018)

• Kaufman Essay Contest Award (best thesis in Jewish Studies), Jewish Studies Department, Tulane University (2018)