She has a bachelor's degree from Goucher College and a doctorate from Rutgers University and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She is the author of two books, "Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920" (NYU Press, 2005) and "Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880-1925" (Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2007). At the HBI, Professor Klapper's work focused on American Jewish women's pre-World War II activism in the suffrage, birth control and peace movements. She has been awarded numerous fellowships for this work from sources as varied as the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Schlesinger Library on the History of American Women at Harvard. Professor Klapper is interested in the ways Jewish identity historically motivated Jewish women's significant activism in social movements.