Alan Cooper was recently appointed JTS’s new provost. Dr. Cooper has
been professor of Bible and director of Publications at JTS since 1997 and the
Elaine Ravich Professor of Jewish Studies since 2005. He has also served as
chair of the Bible Department and a member of the Faculty Executive
Committee. In 1998, he was appointed professor of Bible at the Union
Theological Seminary, a nondenominational Christian seminary, becoming the
first person to hold professorships at both JTS and Union. Dr. Cooper earned a bachelor’s degree in religious studies at Columbia University. He went on to do his graduate work at Yale University, earning a master of philosophy degree and doctorate in religious studies. Dr. Cooper lives in South Orange, New Jersey, with his wife, Dr. Tamar Frank; they have two children.
Jonathan Sarna is the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and director of its Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program. He is recognized as a leading commentator on American Jewish history, religion, and life.
Professor Sarna was raised in New York, where his father was on the JTS faculty, and in Boston. Dr. Sarna attended Brandeis University, the Boston Hebrew College, Merkaz HaRav Kook in Jerusalem, and Yale University, where he obtained his doctorate in 1979.
Dr. Sarna has written, edited, or co-edited more than twenty books, including the acclaimed American Judaism: A History. He is married to Professor Ruth Langer, and they have two children, Aaron and Leah.
Ann Swidler studies the interplay of culture and institutions. Until recently she has focused on American culture, especially the culture of love and marriage. Her most recent book, Talk of Love: How Culture Matters (Chicago, 2001), examines how actors select among elements of their cultural repertoires and how culture gets organized “from the outside in” by codes, contexts, and institutions. Professor Swidler’s current research is on cultural and institutional responses to the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa.
Professor Swidler earned her bachelor’s degree at Harvard and her doctorate at University of California, Berkeley. She teaches sociology of culture, sociology of religion, and sociological theory.
David Tracy is the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies and professor of theology and the philosophy of religion in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Professor Tracy has been hailed as one of the most original theologians in recent decades.
He teaches a wide variety of courses in contemporary theology. His publications include The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism and On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics, and Church.
Professor Tracy underwent seminary training in philosophy and theology
at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York. He was ordained
a priest in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1963. He went on for further
theological study at the Gregorian in Rome, where he received a licentiate
in 1964 and a doctorate in 1969.