Your ongoing support is vital to the future of the Program in Jewish Culture and Society. Your gifts allow the Program to:

  • Award scholarships 
  • Provide research support to faculty 
  • Sponsor conferences, lectures, and workshops in the field of Jewish Studies.

Everything we do is made possible by the gifts we receive each year from alumni and friends. On behalf of the students and faculty who will benefit from your gift, thank you for your continued generosity.  Some of the work these gifts make possible are:

Jewish Studies Program Fund

All gifts to this fund support everything we do from inviting speakers to screening film series. Your ongoing support is crucial for the success of the program! 

Give to Jewish Studies

April 24th Fund

We have set this up in order to have funds available for an event each year in commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. In past years we have fundraised from the ground up for events such as the Spaces of Remembering the Armenian Genocide Conference. The Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies Initiative is committed to offering an event each April, on or near Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. 

Give to the April 24th Fund

Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies Fund

All gifts to this fund support HGMS activities such as the annual graduate student conference that allows students from diverse departments to exchange ideas; the HGMS faculty series that offers presentations on the Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, the Armenian Genocide, and other global events; the Future of Trauma and Memory Studies reading group; and the HGMS blog, Days and Memory. 

Give to the HGMS Fund

Hebrew Program Fund

Gifts to the Fund support the teaching of Hebrew at the University of Illinois, a function that the Program provides to campus.

Give to the Hebrew Program Fund

Central Illinois Jewish Community Archives

All gifts to the fund support academic efforts supporting the Central Illinois Jewish Community Archives, including oral history collection project.

Give to the Jewish Community Archives Fund

Professor Dara E. Goldman Memorial Fund

Dara Goldman

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of Professor Dara Goldman, The Director of the Program in Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois, loving wife of Itai Seggev, daughter of Clifford and Karen Goldman, sister of Elyssa Goldman, daughter in law of Joram and Varda Seggev, sister in law of Guy Seggev and Michal (widow of Shelby ז"ל) Seggev Lerner, and aunt of Elan Lerner, Shira Lerner, and Elizabeth Seggev. Dara passed away on May 13, 2022 while preparing for graduation weekend and the American Jewish Historical Society conference.

Dara (51), graduated with a BA and MA from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from Emory University. In 2008 she published “Out of Bounds: Islands and the Demarcation of Identity in the Hispanic Caribbean (Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory)”. More recently she co-edited a volume of American Literary History on "Twenty-First Century Jewish Writing and the World."

At the University of Illinois, Dara was a tremendous force for research and collaboration. She was connected to numerous campus units and helped form many initiatives to promote dialogue between communities on campus. As the director of the PJCS Dara increased the faculty, funding and research available under the program. She helped create the Central Illinois Jewish Communities’ Archives, was instrumental in hiring new faculty to the program and helped bring top speakers and programs to campus and on behalf of the program off-campus. Dara will always be remembered as a positive force at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In addition to being a great scholar, Dara loved dancing, skiing, science fiction, and romantic comedies. She was gracious and kind to all. Dara was an amazing wife, daughter(-in-law), aunt and friend, who was likely to take a picture or send an article she read because she was thinking of you.

Give to the Prof. Goldman Memorial Fund