Jewish Studies Colloquia
The Jewish Studies Colloquium, which has been meeting since 2001, provides a forum for graduate students and faculty from Brandeis University and other academic institutions around the world to discuss their current research and works-in-progress. The colloquium engages a wide range of topics in Jewish studies from history and thought to political and national identity.
MA and PhD candidates, college and university faculty, and independent scholars are welcome.
2023-2024 Schedule
Fall 2023
Colloquia are hosted in person in Lown 315 at Brandeis and stream live on Zoom. Registration is required for Zoom!
- Tuesday, September 12 – Miriam Goldstein, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — "The Bible in Baghdad: A Medieval Karaite Interprets Genesis"
- Tuesday, October 24 – Ildikó Barna, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest — "Interdisciplinary Exploration of Post-Holocaust History through Digital Tools: Opportunities and Limitations"
- Tuesday, November 14 – Hadar Feldman Samet, Tel Aviv University — "Between the Public and the Communal: Depictions of Sabbatian Spaces in the Late Ottoman Era"
- Tuesday, December 5 – Paola Tartakoff, Rutgers University — "Mendicant Jewish Converts and Miracles Stories in the Medieval Pyrenees"
Spring 2024
- Tuesday, January 23 – Jonathan Crane, Emory University; Emily Filler, Washington and Lee University; Mira Wasserman, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College — "Introducing Modern Jewish Ethics, 1970-Present"
- Tuesday, February 27 – Kirsten Collins, University of Chicago Divinity School — "That Other Fornication: Race and Judaism in Foucault's Concept of Critique"
- Tuesday, March 12 – Eugene Sheppard, Brandeis University — "Valeriu Marcu: Dialectics, Power, and the Writing of History"
- Tuesday, April 16 – Hasia Diner, New York University — "Writing American Jewish History: An Irish Project"
Past Colloquia
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- "Pedagogy, Language, and Labor Politics in Kafka's Hebrew Notebooks"
September 13, 2022
Na'ama Rokem, University of Chicago
- "Ifra Hormiz: Talmudic Stories of the Persian Queen Mother and the Bavli's Redaction"
October 25, 2022
Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Ben-Gurion University
- "A Jewish Bill of Indictment: The New York Black Book of 1946"
November 8, 2022
Elisabeth Gallas, Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture-Simon Dubnow
- "The Precedents and Origin of Djerba's Or Torah Fund"
January 24, 2023
Joshua Picard, Princeton University
- "Do Citizens Need to be Philosophers? Nachman Krochmal’s Diasporic Jewish Politics"
February 14, 2023
Elias Sacks, Jewish Publication Society
- "Registers of Belonging, Registers of Difference: Early Modern Jewish Midwives and their Records"
March 14, 2023
Jordan Katz, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- "Making and Unmaking Literature in Nazi Ghettos in Poland"
April 25, 2023
Sven-Erik Rose, University of California, Davis
- "Métis, Jews, and the Politics of Counting Difference in Canada"
September 14, 2021
David Koffman, York University
- "Two Steps from the Abyss: An Ottoman Jewish Witness to War"
October 12, 2021
Devi Mays, University of Michigan
- "Babyn Yar 80 Years Later: New Findings, Areas of Dispute, and Remaining Questions"
November 16, 2021
Martin Dean, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center
- "Soul Food and Salvation in Medieval Ashkenaz: the Ambrosian Bible's 'Heavenly Banquet' Revisited"
January 18, 2022
David Shyovitz, Northwestern University
- "From the 'Wretched' to the 'Bourgeoisie': Jews in Modern Iran"
February 15, 2022
Daniella Farah, Rice University
- "Hermann Cohen's Virtue Ethics: Power and Agency within the Experience of Marginalization"
March 15, 2022
Shira Billet, Yale University
- "How to Draw German-Jewish History? The Graphic History Project 'Oberbrechen: A German Village Confronts its Nazi Past'"
April 12, 2022
Kim Wünschmann, Institute for the History of the German Jews, Hamburg
- "From the Left and the Right: Campus Antisemitism and American Jewish Life"
September 22, 2020
Marc Dollinger, San Francisco State University
- "God's Disability: Confronting the 'Euthanasia' Murders"
October 27, 2020
Dagmar Herzog, the Graduate Center at CUNY
- "Riddling Materiality: the Queen of Sheba, Solomon, and Riddles in Ninth-Century Tradition"
November 17, 2020
Jillian Stinchcomb, Brandeis University
- "Jerusalem's Ancient Queens: Gender, Power, and Erasure"
February 23, 2021
Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Fordham University
- "The Global Merchants: the World of the Sassoons"
March 23, 2021
Joseph Sassoon, Georgetown University
- "'Sit and Study This Book with Your Family': Print Culture in 19th-Century North Africa"
April 20, 2021
Noam Sienna, University of Minnesota
- "The 'Question of the Pogroms' in a Paris Courtroom in the 1920s: the Trial of Sholem Schwartzbard"
September 17, 2019
Alexandra Garbarini, Williams College
- "Mobility: Jewish Migration from Lithuania Before 1880"
November 19, 2019
Tobias Brinkmann, Penn State University
- "Envisioning a Jewish Monastic Community: Zalman Schachter, Catholicism, and the B'nai Or Fellowship"
December 10, 2019
Or Rose, Hebrew College
- "The Trouble with Medieval Conversion: Christendom and Christian Anxiety about Jewish Conversion"
January 21, 2020
Nina Caputo, University of Florida
- "The Return of the Corporation: Recent Israeli Conversion Cases and American Debates about Religious Freedom"
February 25, 2020
Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University
- "'A mouth as round as a signet- ring'; A Gendered Reading of Jewelry in the Medieval Islamicate Society and Culture"
March 17, 2020 (Canceled)
Miriam Frenkel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- "God's Disability: Confronting the 'Euthanasia' Murders"
April 21, 2020 (Canceled)
Dagmar Herzog, the Graduate Center - CUNY
- "Wittgenstein's Moses: Reference, Identity and an Embarrassing Confession"
October 9, 2018
Abraham Socher, Jewish Review of Books
- "The Outsider: Benzion Netenyahu and the Politics of Resentment"
November 6, 2018
Adi Armon, University of Wisconsin - Madison
- "Rabbinic Narratives and the Problem of Non-Compliance in the Babylonian Talmud"
December 4, 2018
Lynn Kaye, Brandeis University
- "A Crip Zionism? Jessie Sampter, Disability, and Gender in the Yishuv"
January 29, 2019
Sarah Imhoff, Indiana University - Bloomington
- "Embodying the Database: Race, Gender, and Social Justice"
March 12, 2019
Dorothy Kim, Brandeis University
- "The Crisis of the American Jewish Intellectual: Marxism, God, and Jewish Identity in the 1940s"
April 9, 2019
Tony Michels, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Participating in the Colloquium
Presenters discuss a work-in-progress made available in advance. Following a brief overview (5-10 minutes), the presenter opens the floor to questions, critiques, suggestions, and general discussion.
Papers, which are not to exceed 30 pages, will be made available online two weeks before each colloquium session.
Presenting at the Colloquium
To submit your works-in-progress for presentation at the Jewish Studies Colloquium, please contact Sylvia Fuks Fried or Eugene Sheppard.