Jeanne Abrams
Director, Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society
Professor at Penrose Library
University of Denver
Sturm Hall, Room 162
2000 E. Asbury Ave.
Denver, CO 80208
Phone: 303-871-3016 and 303-871-2977
Email: jabrams@du.edu

Recent Updates

Jeanne Abrams is a professor at the Penrose Library at the University of Denver.

Since 1982, she has been the director of the Beck Archives and the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society—part of the Center for Judaic Studies and Penrose Library at DU.

She recently published her new book, Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health (New York University Press, 2013).  She is the author of Jewish Women Pioneering the Frontier Trail: A History in the American West (NYU Press 2006) and Dr. Charles David Spivak: A Jewish Immigrant and the American Tuberculosis Crusade, as well as numerous articles in the fields of American, Jewish and medical history which have appeared in scholarly journals and popular magazines.

Her past presentations include:

• In May 2013, Jeanne led a salon for the Divisions of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences titled,  "Revolutionary Medicine: America;s Founders in Sickness and Health"
• In December 2011, Jeanne led a salon for the Divisions of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences titled, "There's No Business Like Show Business: The Influence of American Jewish Broadway Composers on American Music."
•  In November 2011, Jeanne presented a guest lecture, "Jewish Women Pioneering the Frontier Trail in the America West," on campus. (Read more about Jeanne's book of the same name.)

Publications

•  Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health (New York University Press, 2013)
•  In Search of Health and Wealth: Denver's Early Jewish Community (Denver Inside and Out (Colorado History, vol. 16, 2011)
•  On the Road Again: Consumptives Traveling for Health in the American West, 1840-1925 (Great Plain Quarterly, fall 2010)
•  Dr. Charles David Spivak: A Jewish Immigrant and the American Tuberculosis Movement (University Press of Colorado, 2009)
•  Jewish Denver, 1859 – 1940 (Arcadia Press, 2007)
•  Jewish Women Pioneering the Frontier Trail: A History in the West (New York University Press, 2006)
•  Blazing the Tuberculosis Trail: The Religio-ethnic Role of Four Sanatoria in Early Denver (1991)

Jeanne is currently completing an essay on merchant prince Benjamin Altman, founder in 1865 of what would become New York City's B. Altman & Company, one of the premier department stores in America. It will be published as part of a book on German immigrants in America by the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.

Education

PhD, American history, University of Colorado-Boulder