BAJS Conference 2012 Programme

Registration Form

Please note that you need to return the conference and dinner registration to Sara BenIsaac (s.benisaac@ucl.ac.uk). If you would like to participate in the visit to the British Library, please contact Sacha Stern (sacha.stern@ucl.ac.uk). The number of places for the visit to the British Library is very limited so you’ll be well advised to register for this as soon as possible, should you want to go.

Register for the Conference and pay your conference fees via PayPal:

Although the conference is open to all who are interested in an academic approach to Jewish Studies, anyone presenting a paper who is not a member of BAJS will ordinarily be expected to join by the time of the conference. Membership is open to anyone with a serious academic interest to Jewish studies. For membership enquiries and applications, please write to the BAJS Secretary, Lars Fischer lf309@cam.ac.uk, and see BAJS Websit : http://britishjewishstudies.org/about/join-bajs/

The conference seeks to explore the connections and intersections between Jews, colonialism, and postcolonialism. The existing scholarly literature, mainly following the work of Paul Gilroy, has begun to recognise this conjunction in a variety of ways whether in relation to ‘multidirectional memory’ (Michael Rothberg), ‘the crisis of postcolonial culture’ (Aamir Mufti), or the exclusions of ‘disciplinary thinking’ (Bryan Cheyette). But there is still a need to bring together these sometimes contradictory approaches and to begin to constitute this topic as a new field of comparative studies.

Proposals are welcome from those who want to promote theoretical engagement between Jewish and postcolonial studies as well as those providing more detailed case studies – including from all periods and all places – relating to the history, sociology, and anthropology of Jews (as both ‘white’ and ‘not quite’) in relation to colonialism and postcolonialism. This conference is part of a growing attempt to explore the substantial ways in which these fields inform each other. We welcome papers – theoretical and case studies – covering all chronologies and locations, including discussions of Jews in imperial contexts from antiquity to the present day. Papers are also welcome on how these tensions and intersections have been articulated in the cultural sphere, including, for example, art, film, literature, museums, music and television.

Please send proposals, maximum of 250 words, and a brief biography by 1 September 2012 to:

Dr James Jordan (jaj1@soton.ac.uk) and Dr Shirli Gilbert (s.gilbert@soton.ac.uk)

The Kaplan Centre will provide four nights’ accommodation for those presenting papers at the conference.

The editorial board of Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, a peer-reviewed electronic journal, invites submissions for its 2012 volume. SCJR publishes scholarship on the history, theology, and contemporary realities of Jewish-Christian relations and reviews new materials in the field, providing a vehicle for exchange of information, cooperation, and mutual enrichment in the field of Christian-Jewish studies and relations.

Interested authors are encouraged to contact the editors in advance. For publication in the 2012 volume, papers should be submitted by September 1, 2012 through the journal’s website. Papers submitted after September 1, 2012 may be considered for publication in a future volume. All papers will be subject to peer-review before acceptance for publication.

Ruth Langer, Co-Editor of SCJR, Professor of Jewish Studies and Associate Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, Boston College

Kevin Spicer, CSC, Co-Editor of SCJR, Professor of History, Stonehill College

www.bc.edu/scjr

The studentship consists of a UK/EU fees bursary over three years and an annual maintenance grant of £ 10,000. It is offered by the Centre for Jewish Studies in conjunction with the University of Leeds Legacies of War Centenary Project and is funded by the Montague Burton Endowment.

As well as carrying out doctoral research, the successful candidate is expected to contribute to the development and coordination of academic and community engagement activities that will be organised by Legacies of War and cultural partners (including Jewish organisations) during the Centenary years 2014-2018. The candidate will have opportunities to present his/her research findings in the context of these activities.

Click here for an application form and further particulars.

Scholars working in a wide variety of disciplines have long identified the late fifteenth through the late eighteenth century as a discrete historical period called “Early Modern.” Among scholars interested in the place of Jews and Jewish culture within this period, however, there has been little attempt to think broadly about early modernity as a whole or to connect the insights of discrete studies in any coherent and meaningful way. This research group will create a conversation that connects these smaller units and so examines those changes in the Jewish world which characterized the Early Modern. We will focus on the issue of borders and boundaries, understood as not only geographical, but also social, cultural, legal, political, and economic. Some divided and connected the Jewish and the non-Jewish, while others functioned within Jewish society, creating internal divisions and conjunctures. Considering, among other things, the breakdown of old social and cultural boundaries and the construction of new ones, the boundary as both a dividing line and a place of meeting and mixing between different groups (Jewish and non-Jewish), and the ambiguities inherent in situations where elites envisioned strong boundaries while others ignored them (and vice versa), will encourage a wide ranging discussion on the very nature of both Jewish Early Modernity and the early modern period in general.

Proposals might address the following questions:

• How did the establishment of new Jewish centers in new places with new legal frameworks affect the development of Jewish society and culture?
• What were the nature and characteristics of Jewish transregional networks in the Early Modern age?
• How did the religious and cultural borders between Ashkenazim and Sephardim change?
• How did the spread of printing affect cultural and intellectual boundaries both inside Jewish society and between Jews and non-Jews?
• To what extent did early modern Jewish society witness shifts in its cultural borders, such as those between men and women, the educated and the uneducated, and the rabbinic and lay elites?
• How did early modern European religious and intellectual life affect the social, cultural and political boundaries between Jew and non-Jew?
• What are the implications of changes in the social, cultural, religious, and political borders of the early modern Jewish world for our understanding of the early modern period in general? and of the modern Jewish experience as well?

The Center invites applications from scholars in the humanities and social sciences at all levels, as well as outstanding graduate students in the final stages of writing their dissertations. Stipend amounts are based on a fellow’s academic standing and financial need with a maximum of $50,000 for the academic year. A contribution also may be made toward travel expenses. The application deadline is November 10, 2012. Fellowship recipients will be notified by February 1, 2013.

Applications are available on our website: katz.sas.upenn.edu
For questions contact: Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, 420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106    Tel: 215-238-1290, email: carrielo@sas.upenn.edu

Keynote Speakers Paper Titles:

• Prof. Sander Gilman: SCANDAL! Images, Discourses, and the Image of Discourse that ‘hurt people’s feelings’
• Prof. Griselda Pollock: Screen Memories: Making Pasts Futures in ‘And Europe Will Be Stunned’ by Yael Bartana
• Dr. Ihab Saloul: Sites and Insights: Exilic Memory and the Politics of the Anti-linear Sound-Image

Confirmed Speakers Paper Titles:

• Dr. Alma Mikulinsky (University of Hong Kong): Crossing Discursive Borders: Representations of Checkpoints in Palestinian Art and Film
• Dr. Simon Faulkner (Manchester Metropolitan University): Israel/Palestine and the Politics of Curiosity
• Dr. Orly Shevi (Tel Aviv University): Ici et Ailleurs – Godard’s Cinematic reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Lior Libman (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Shadows over the Land Without Shade: The Iconisation of the Kibbutz in the 1950s as an acting-out of post-Nakba Cultural Trauma
• Dr. Gil Pasternak (The University of Huddersfield): Jewish Soldiers of the Time: Ethos, Pathos and Logos in Rineke Dijkstra’s ‘Israel Portraits’

Screening and Artist’s Talk:

• Yael Bartana and Sławomir Sierakowski (founder and chief editor of Krytyka Polityczna magazine) will discuss Bartana’s piece ‘And Europe Will be Stunned’ (2011)

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN: http://www.store.hud.ac.uk/browse/product.asp?catid=208&modid=1&compid=1

University of Leeds and Huddersfield Students: Free (please read the ‘Read More’ section)

Delegates Early Bird Registration – 26 April – 7 May 2012: £15 (please read the ‘Read More’ section)

Delegates Late Registration: 8 – 20 May 2012: £20

For updates please do follow us on Twitter @GilPasternak or at: http://gilpasternak.wordpress.com/

Successful applicants will be expected to carry out their research work at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Center from January 2013 through June 2013 (the term of fellowship might be extended if the financial circumstances of the Center allow). During this period the fellows are expected to conduct their research in Israel and to participate in the workshops, colloquia and all activities of the Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center.

This call is open to all proposals within the scope of the center’s research interests and activities.

Applicants must have fair knowledge of the German language, i.e. the ability to read texts in German and to follow lectures given in the German language.

Applicants interested in a postdoctoral fellowship must have been awarded the Ph.D. no earlier than October 01, 2008. Applications for a doctoral fellowship can only be accepted if the applicant has been a Ph.D. student for not more than five years.

Applicants may be of all nationalities. Israeli citizens applying for a doctoral fellowship must be registered at the Hebrew University as a Ph.D. student. Israeli citizens who are registered as Ph.D. students at a university abroad will be treated as international applicants.

Successful applicants will be granted a monthly stipend of 5,500 NIS. Furthermore, international applicants will be entitled to health insurance coverage. Fellows from abroad will also be allotted a round-trip flight (up to $800 or €600).

Applicants must submit:

• Application Form [download from the website of The Rosenzweig Center]
• A letter of application
• The research proposal (3-10 pages)
• Curriculum Vitae
• An example of written work, max. 30 pages
• Two letters of recommendation
• Official M.A. or Doctoral Diploma

Submission of applications and inquiries should be sent to the following e-mail address: rosenzweigfellowship@gmail.com. All material can be written either in English, German or Hebrew.

Please arrange for the letters of recommendation to be sent directly by your referees to the following e-mail address: rosenzweig@vms.huji.ac.il.

Closing date for receipt of applications is May 15, 2012. Decisions will be made within a month and a half and applicants will be informed forthwith.

The Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yitzhak Rabin Building, Mount Scopus
Jerusalem 91905

http://rosenzweig.huji.ac.il

Phone: 00972-2-588 1909 or 588 1686
Fax: 00972-2-521 13 69

rosenzweigfellowship@gmail.com

This 15-week e-learning course will explore the history, culture and theology of Muslims and Jews, reflecting on similarities and differences as well as the major challenges. Assisted by leading scholars in the US and Europe with a wealth of experience in this field, the course will also offer strategies for building bridges between the communities.

Because this course is committed to the highest levels of scholarly integrity, it will provide a space for the discussion of the entire range, in the broadest sense, of the Jewish-Muslim encounter. This discussion does not preclude more controversial issues.

Applications are now being accepted for the course starting week commencing 27 August 2012. (The deadline for applications is 6 August 2012.)

The normal course fee for the American University award is £2500 but Woolf Institute students will be able to apply either for one of the 5 full scholarships or 5 bursaries (resulting in a reduction of fees to £450 each).

For more details of the course, together with the application form, visit the website http://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/courses/mj.asp.

For more details and the schedule for the day see here.