Suzanne Wasserman

• Name — Suzanne Rachel Wasserman • Occupation — Historian, Professor, writer, and film director • Spouse — David Stern • Children — 1 • Education — University of Wisconsin (BA) New York University (PhD) • Born — 26 May 1957 • Birthplace — Hyde Park, Chicago, Illinois, U.S. • Died — 26 June 2017 • Place of death — Manhattan, New York, U.S. • Relatives — Janet Jagan (aunt) Joey Jagan (cousin) Stanley Wasserman (second cousin)

Wasserman was born on May 26, 1957, in Hyde Park, Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Jewish parents Edward Wasserman, a psychoanalyst and social progressive and Eileen (née Kronberg), an artist and activist for peace who started an artists' cooperative gallery in Hyde Park. Her paternal grandfather Samuel Wasserman, from an old-world religious Jewish family, immigrated to America around 1920 from the western Ukrainian town of Kamianets-Podilskyi, then part of the Russian Empire. He had an interest in social causes, and was briefly active in the labor movement in the 1930s. Wasserman was one of four sisters along with her twin sister Tina and younger sisters, Stephanie and Nadine. She graduated from Kenwood Academy prior to beginning her undergraduate studies at Brandeis University. According to Wasserman's sister, while growing up in Chicago, "Suzanne was very interested in history because there were so many people in Hyde Park with really interesting backgrounds, whether they were associated with the University of Chicago or whether they had an immigrant story or whether they were political". Wasserman earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Wisconsin after transferring from Brandeis. Brandeis had a large Jewish enrollment and it likely influenced her future career focus, as did her senior thesis at Wisconsin, where she studied her college town, writing on life in Madison in the 1960s. She obtained her PhD from New York University in American history and wrote her doctoral dissertation on life on the Lower East Side during the Depression.

In the 1980s, she made New York City, particularly the Lower East Side, her residence and the center of her work in a wide array of publications, exhibitions and educational programs. After completing her PhD at New York University, she worked as a professor at the New School for Social Research and Iona College teaching American history, world history, urban studies and other topics. She published widely on the Great Depression, Jewish nostalgia, housing, restaurant culture, tourism, pushcart peddling, silent films, the Jewish silent screen siren Theda Bara, 19th-century saloons and 21st-century street fairs. In the 1990s, she worked as a consultant and then staff member for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

In 2000, she was hired as associate director of the Gotham Center for New York City History, then a start-up organization at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She was later promoted to director. The group brought together teachers, students, scholars, librarians, archivists, filmmakers and museum curators to make the city's history more accessible. As the Gotham Center's Director, Wasserman created and organized seminars and conferences, built its website, and managed teaching programs that brought New York history into school classrooms. One historian noted that Wasserman's work "was aimed at understanding the deep cultural and social networks that still supported certain ethnic institutions on the Lower East Side". While at New York University, she worked as an instructor of museum studies and public history in conjunction with her position as director of the Gotham Center.

Wasserman died on June 26, 2017, at her home in Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan. According to her son, Raphael Stern, the cause of death was progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare brain disorder.