Hello and Welcome. I'm Janice Fernheimer, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. My academic work focuses on how rhetorical theory can help us avoid or solve conflict over competing claims to collective identity, cultural legitimacy, and representative authority. I investigate questions of invention and cross-audience communication to better articulate how new ideas are created, revised, and circulated so that they may travel outside of and gain recognition beyond the particular audiences who initially imagine and introduce them. All of my projects explore ways that rhetorical theory can help us build or expand community by improving communication and creating situations where dialogue is more deliberative, interactions are more integrative, and collaborations result in more equal participation.Currently, I am working on my book manuscript tentatively titled, Steppin' Into Zion: Hatzaad Harishon and Black Jewish Identity from Civil Rights to Black Power. It focuses on communication problems stemming from interactions among Jews of all races in New York.

Steppin’ Into Zion, is based on my nationally recognized dissertation which was supported by a Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Jewish Studies, sponsored by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, and recipient of an Honorable Mention for the 2007 Rhetoric Society of America’s Dissertation of the Year. Analyzing primary archival documents (letters, memos, proposals) housed at the Schomburg Center in New York and interviews conducted in Harlem and Israel, I argue that we need a new concept, interruptive invention, to describe and evaluate the important work rhetors do when they begin to shake up a dominant discourse, even if those in power do not immediately recognize or accept the changes wrought by the interrupters. Focusing on Black Jews, their interactions with other Jews, and the resulting conflicts over legitimate identity, my project theorizes from practice to extend Perelman and Burke Studies by further developing concepts of identification, dissociation, and communion to better account for their practical application when the parties involved do not share equal access to power (institutional or otherwise). It also advances identity studies by providing a means for more nuanced and multi-faceted identities to become recognized as possible, even it if is not until much later that they are granted legitimacy by larger audiences.

I've been interested in Black Jews, Hebrew Israelites, and self-proclaimed Black Jews, ever since I lived in Israel (2000-2001). My personal interactions with them were always fascinating and I found myself most intrigued by the questions surrounding their legal, cultural, and social status within and outside of the United States and Israel. While I was in Israel in 2000-2001 and 2003, I conducted a series of interviews with Hebrew Israelites living in Dimona, Israel. Additionally, I have interviewed Black Jews and Rabbis in Harlem and spent many hours researching in the archives at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

My future research projects include a book length study that traces the history of Jewish rhetorical and pedagogical traditions, a collaboratively-authored article that explores how wikis-affect writing classroom practice forthcoming in Computers and Composition Online Spring 2009, and an article examining the ways marginal Jewish groups such as the B'nai Menashe (a group of Indian Jews) use new media and digital technologies to advance and gain legitimacy for their identity claims.