Current Project

Women make up about half of Jewish Studies scholars. Yet in peer reviewed journals, women made up only about a quarter of cited authors. How can we understand this difference? How does it compare to other fields? Sarah's working project, Gender & Citations in Jewish Studies, uses two related methods from digital humanities: network analyses and bibliometric analyses of gender and Jewish studies scholarship. The data she has collected show that men cite men at even higher rates than women cite men. Preliminary network analyses suggest that we should be asking questions about network neighborhoods and academic “power brokers,” such as: Are there particular works that are cited very often, and what is the gender of the author of those works? This project uses digital methods to understand better the gendered dynamics of scholarly citations—and even more, the structures, networks, and power relationships that they can illuminate. Ultimately, her hope is that a better understanding of the problem at structural levels can lead us to a clearer path toward gender equity.