Writing It!
The Podcast About Academics & Writing
Displaying 2 items of Writing It! with the tag "jewish history".
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Episode 84: Writing Page-Turning Banking History with Rebecca Kobrin
September 7th, 2026 | 47 mins 48 secs
antisemitism, banking history, columbia university, harvard university press, immigration history, jewish history, new york history, spatial history
We’re talking to Columbia University Professor of History Rebecca Kobrin about writing her most recent book, Credit to the Nation: Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, 1873–1930, and about putting individuals at the center of our histories. We also talk about how leading walking tours leads to writing better histories, and Kobrin’s involvement in the online Mapping Historic New York project.
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Episode 52: Letting the primary sources tell the story with Rachel Cockerell
June 16th, 2025 | 27 mins 29 secs
family history, israel zangwill, jewish history
In this episode, we’re talking with writer and historian Rachel Cockerell, author of Melting Point: Family, Memory and the Search for a Promised Land, about the process of writing a family history that Zadie Smith, Simon Schama, and others have praised. Cockerell tells us about her research and writing process; deciding to take out the narrative voice and letting the primary sources tell the story on their own; and why fiction often serves as a model for the kind of reading experience she hopes to give readers.