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Dr. Melissa R. Klapper ‘95 is a professor of history and the director of women’s & gender studies at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. She is the author of Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920 (NYU, 2005); Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880-1925 (Ivan R. Dee, 2007); and Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940 (NYU, 2013), which won the National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies. Klapper is the recipient of many grants and awards, and she lectures frequently in academic and community settings. Her most recent book is Ballet Class: An American History (Oxford, 2020). Ballet Class is a pathbreaking social history that takes seriously the experiences of the countless everyday people who pursued recreational ballet. The book explores the growth of ballet class as it became an integral part of 20th-century American childhood across borders of gender, class, race, and sexuality. This will be moderated by Vanessa Logan ’95, the executive director of the Texas Ballet Theater.