History Department

LORI WEINTROB: 

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Lori R. Weintrob is Chair and Associate Professor of the History Department, and Director of the City Studies Program, at Wagner College, a liberal arts college in Staten Island, New York. Weintrob received her Ph.D. and MA from the University of California, Los Angeles and her B.A. from Princeton University. For the past decade, she has worked in partnership with diverse community organizations and schools, drawing other staff, faculty and students into local civic projects.  Through courses on the family, immigration, human rights and local history, she has engaged her students in service and oral history projects involving Liberian refugees and in the betterment of Park Hill, the poorest neighborhood on Staten Island. In 2003, the New York Center for Interpersonal Development, an agency serving local youth, honored Weintrob as “Community Builder of the Year.” In 2006, she was a finalist for the Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service-Learning.  In the February 27, 2009 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, her work was featured under the title “A Better Model for Service-learning.” Weintrob served as the college’s first director of Project Pericles.  She is currently co-chair of SI350, a borough-wide celebration of Staten Island’s 350^th Anniversary (1661-2011).  Her research interests range from the cultural history of modern France to the rise of the welfare state and New York immigration history.  Her most recent publication is as co-author of a photo-history Port Richmond (Arcadia, 2009), a profile of a unique New York City neighborhood transformed by three centuries of immigration.