Joy Ladin, Ph.D.

Professor of English, David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English, Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University

Dr. Joy Ladin is a professor of English and holds the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University. She is the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. Her memoir of transition, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, was recently published by University of Wisconsin Press; her sixth book of poetry, The Definition of Joy, was published June 2012. Her essays on gender identity, Judaism, and poetry have been widely published, and she has taught and spoken about Judaism and gender identity around the country. She has served on the Board of Nehirim, and on the Advisory Board for the Human Rights Campaign's Jewish Organizational Equality Index.

Joy is the author of five books of poetry, Coming to Joy is Life (2010), Psalms  (2010), Transmigration (2009), The Book of Anna (2006), and Alternatives To History (2003), as well as a critical study, Soldering the Abyss: Emily Dickinson and Modern American Poetry (2010). Her poems and essays have been widely published. Joy was a finalist for the 2009 Lambda Literary Award. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for Poetry and received an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship. She was also a Fulbright Scholar. She received her Ph.D. at Princeton, M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College.