Lewis, who has taught American history at Rutgers in Newark since 1977, is currently Rutgers chair of the Federated History Department of Rutgers-New Jersey Institute of Technology. She also teaches in the history Ph.D. program at Rutgers in New Brunswick, and has been a visiting professor at Princeton University. Lewis, a Maplewood resident, also previously acted as director of the Graduate History Program. An internationally celebrated Jeffersonian scholar, Lewis specializes in colonial and early national history.
Jan Lewis brings a wealth of experience to this position, having served for many years as chair of the History Department, noted Provost Diner. She has played an active role on numerous university, campus and arts & sciences committees, and is deeply committed to Rutgers and the Newark campus. He said Lewis would immediately begin working with Dean Kirby to insure a smooth transition.
Lewis teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses at Rutgers in Newark, whose history faculty are joined with those at NJIT in a single federated department that offers an integrated curriculum and joint undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Lewis is the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Values in Jeffersons Virginia (Cambridge University Press, 1983), and co-editor, with Peter Stearns, of An Emotional History of the United States (New York University Press, 1998); with Peter S. Onuf of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory and Civic Culture (Virginia, 1999); and The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race and the New Republic (University of Virginia Press, 2002), with James Horn and Peter Onuf. She also co-authored a college history textbook, Making a Nation (Prentice Hall, 2002).
Her current editorial projects are an examination of how the founding fathers grappled with the challenge presented by women and slaves to their egalitarian ideology (Cambridge University Press), and the second volume of the Penguin History of the United States, covering the years 1760-1830.
Lewis has served as chair of the Committee of Women Historians of the American Historical Association and of the New Jersey Historical Commission, as well as on the editorial boards of the American Historical Review, Journal of the Early Republic, Journal of Southern History and Virginia History. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies, Center for the History of Freedom at Washington University, and the International Center for Jefferson Studies. She is frequently quoted in national media on a number of topics, including Jefferson and the founding fathers, and American history during the colonial period.
Lewis received her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in both History and American Studies from the University of Michigan and her A.B. from Bryn Mawr College. Her husband, Barry Bienstock, is head of the history department at the Horace Mann School. Her son, James Grimmelmann, is a fellow of the Internet Society Project at Yale Law School, and her daughter-in-law, Aislinn Black, is a medical student at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford.
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University in Newark encompasses the Newark College of Arts and Sciences (NCAS), University College and the Graduate School-Newark. The Newark College of Arts and Sciences, which enrolls more than 60 percent of the undergraduates at Rutgers in Newark, is the largest school on campus, offering majors in almost 40 fields. The Graduate School offers doctoral and masters degrees in the arts and humanities, sciences, management, nursing and criminal justice. University College is designed for adult students to attend class on evenings or weekends. For more information: Academics at Rutgers-Newark