Conferences, Workshops, Seminars

Yale University Conference “Rokhl Oyerbakh: The Bridge Between Wartime and Postwar Testimony” Nov. 3-4

Rokhl OyerbakhRokhl Oyerbakh: The Bridge Between Wartime and Postwar Testimony

Sunday, November 3rd, and Monday, November 4th, 2019
Yale University, New Haven, CT

 

Center Director Avinoam Patt and affiliated faculty member Samuel Kassow will be participating in an upcoming conference at Yale University hosted by the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University Library.

This November, the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies will host the first ever international symposium dedicated to the legacy of writer, historian, and documentarian Rokhl Oyerbakh (Rachel Auerbach).

Rokhl Oyerbakh was a writer, essayist and a member of the Oyneg Shabes underground documentation project in the Warsaw Ghetto. As one of the only survivors of Oyneg Shabes, she helped recover the buried documentation after the war before emigrating to Israel. As a survivor-historian, Oyerbakh’s work to document first-person accounts of victims’ experiences continued after the war as Director of Yad Vashem’s Department for the Collection of Witness Testimony. She was responsible for curating survivor testimony for the Eichmann trial, and she played a prominent role as a survivor-advocate in the controversy surrounding Jean-François Steiner’s book Treblinka. These are but a few facets of Oyerbakh’s important contributions to our understanding of the survivor experience, and the history of the Holocaust.

Hosted by the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University Library, with keynote speaker Samuel Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of History, Trinity College

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, no registration required
 

WEBSITE: https://fortunoff.library.yale.edu/events/rokhl/
With questions, please contact Stephen Naron at stephen.naron@yale.edu.
 

Presenters and Speakers:
  • Leora Bilsky, Professor at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law, and Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights, Tel Aviv University, Israel
  • Dr. Boaz Cohen, Western Galilee College, Akko, Israel
  • Havi Dreifuss, Professor in Jewish history, Tel Aviv University, Israel
  • Glenn Dynner, Chair of Religion Department, Sarah Lawrence College
  • Professor Dr. Efrat Gal-ed, Institut für Jüdische Studien, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany
  • Laura Jockusch, Albert Abramson Assistant Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University
  • Dr. Lisa M. Leff, Director of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • Samuel Moyn, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History at Yale University
  • Avinoam Patt, Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, University of Connecticut
  • Sharon Pucker Rivo, Executive Director, National Center for Jewish Film, Brandeis University
  • Sven-Erik Rose, Professor of German and of Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis
  • David Roskies, Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture, Professor of Jewish literature, Jewish Theological Seminary
  • Karolina Szymaniak, Assistant Professor at the Department of Jewish Studies, University of Wrocław, Poland 
About Fortunoff Archive at Yale University Library
 

In 1979, the Holocaust Survivors Film Project began collecting video-taped interviews of Holocaust survivors in the New Haven area. In 1981, the collection was donated to Yale University and The Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, part of the Yale University Library, opened its doors to the public the following year. The Fortunoff Archive has been working to record, collect and preserve Holocaust witness testimonies — and facilitate the work of researchers, educators and the general public — ever since.

The Fortunoff Archive currently holds more than 4,400 testimonies, which are comprised of over 12,000 recorded hours of videotape. Testimonies were produced in cooperation with thirty-six affiliated projects across North America, South America, Europe, and Israel, and each project maintains a duplicate collection of locally recorded videotapes. The Fortunoff Archive and its affiliates recorded the testimonies of willing individuals with first-hand experience of the Nazi persecutions, including those who were in hiding, survivors, bystanders, resistants, and liberators.

Testimonies were recorded in the language the witness preferred, and range in length from 30 minutes to over 40 hours (recorded over several sessions).

2018 Borderlands Graduate Symposium

2018 Borderlands Graduate Symposium

Theme: “Cartographies of the Body: Subversions, Surveillance, Crossings”

UConn, Storrs, March 30, 2018

March 30

11a-12:15p

Session 1A: Body and Faith: The Struggle for Symbolic Recognition and Political Inclusion Among Afro-Jewish Communities in The Context of The Middle East and East Africa [ASIAN AMERICAN CULTURAL CENTER, STUDENT UNION 428]

Moderator: Adane Zawdu (University of Connecticut)

1)    Janae McMillan (University of Connecticut) | From Deuteronomy to Dimona: An Analysis of the Identity Formation of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem

2)    Muwaffag (Moi) Ibrahim (University of Connecticut) | Black and White or Blue and Yellow?: Identity, Inclusion and Disillusion

3)    Sangjae (Jae) Lee (University of Connecticut) | Police Power in Israel As a Religiously Homogeneous and Multi-Racial State

 

Discussant: Greg Doukas (Political Science, University of Connecticut).

Call for Applications: 2017 Leffell Seminar

Call for Applications: 2017 Leffell Seminar on the Impact of Israel upon American Jewry (August 7-9, 2017)

Deadline: April 7, 2017

How has Israel shaped the culture, religious expression, political and organizational life, and self-understanding of American Jews between 1948 and the present? This subject will be explored at a three day seminar sponsored by The Lisa and Michael Leffell Foundation, August 7-9, 2017 in White Plains, New York.

Facilitated by senior academic faculty and leading opinion-makers, the seminar invites applicants from a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences. All transportation and lodging expenses will be provided by the Foundation. Seminar presenters will receive $2,500 stipend for their participation. Early and mid-career academic, advanced graduate students, and thought leaders are invited to submit an application by April 7, 2017 with notification of accepted for the seminar by April 30, 2017.

For more information, contact spopovsky@leffellfoundation.org or visit israeled.org/leffell-seminar.

Brown University: Revisiting the Questions of Jewish Origins

The Program in Judaic Studies at Brown University will host a conference entitled “Revisiting the Question of Jewish Origins: Myth/Construct/Reality” on March 20-21, 2017 at The Faculty Club, One Magee Street, Providence, Rhode Island.

The Jews have one of the longest continuously recorded histories of any people in the world, but what do we actually know about their origins? This multi-disciplinary symposium aims to bring together new research on the question of Jewish origin from a range of fields, including historical studies, archaeology, and genetics.

All conference sessions are open to the public. Any questions should be addressed to Katharina Galor at katharina_galor@brown.edu.

Call for Submissions: EAJS Conference Grant Programme

header11

The European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) invites submissions to the EAJS Conference Grant Programme in European Jewish Studies for the 2017-2018 academic year. The purpose of the program is to foster cooperation among scholars involved in Jewish Studies across Europe, and to support early career researchers in this field to develop a professional network.

The grants can cover two academic events: The EAJS Conferences and EAJS Summer Schools. The grants are used to cover an individual event; funds can be requested for travel expenses, accommodations and maintenance of the active participants. Academic excellence and the impact on network building in Jewish Studies in Europe will be key criteria; international cooperation in the development proposals is strongly encouraged.

Deadline: April 20, 2017.

For more information on application materials, the program itself, or general inquiries, you can visit the EAJS website. Inquiries about the program itself can also be directed to admin@eurojewishstudies.org.

Contested Citizenship – An Interdisciplinary Conference

This conference brings together scholars from a variety of fields to address how citizenship has operated as a terrain of struggle in the United States and the Americas. Topics include state violence and incarceration, undocumented students and workers, and the role of empire and transnational capitalism on migration and racial formation.

Speakers include Cesar Abadia, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Robert Chase, Aviva Chomsky, Iyko Day, Christina Heatherton, Melanie Newport, Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, and Cindy Wu.

The Keynote Address will be given by Vijay Prashad, who is professor of international studies at Trinity College. He is the author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South.

Keynote Address: March 30, 5:30pm

Panels: March 31, 9:00am – 3:15pm

Location: UConn Alumni House

This conference is sponsored by El Instituto, American Studies, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Registration is free at http://elin.uconn.edu/contested-citizenship.

A Call for Papers on Medicine in the Bible and Talmud

The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the European Association of Biblical Studies  (EABS) are calling for papers for their 2017 International Meeting in Berlin, Germany from August 8th through the 11th. They are inviting papers on the theme of “literary and discursive framing of concepts of medical knowledge in late Antiquity,” extending from biblical and apocryphal texts, into later Jewish, Rabbinic-Talmudic traditions and beyond.

The organizers of the meeting are welcoming presentations on the representation and embedding of medical (and other) knowledge in particular texts and contexts. Papers may address the special design of such knowledge discourses: How does the use of rhetoric strategies, literary structures, or genres in scientific texts affect the ideas conveyed? Could a specific hermeneutic not only serve as a ‘container’ but also as a method for knowledge acquisition?

Deadline for Paper Submission: February 22, 2017

Membership is required in either SBL or EABS at the time of the proposal, through to the meeting. The full text of the call for papers can be found on EABS’s website. More information about the meeting and program requirements can be found on SBL’s website.

 

Afro-Jewish Studies Association Calls for Summer 2017 Papers

87186782

The Afro-Jewish Studies Association is calling for papers to be submitted for the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s annual meeting in Jamaica from June 22 to June 24, 2017. This year’s general theme is “Theorizing Livity, Decolonizing Freedom,” however all topic related to Afro-Jewish life are welcome.

Proposals related to the Afro-Jewish Studies Association should be submitted to the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s website. Questions about the conference can also be directed to caribphil2017@gmail.com.

Deadline: December 19, 2016

2016 IAJGS Conference in Seattle – 8/7/16

Seattle

The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies is very excited that this summer’s conference  will be held in Seattle, WA, USA, from August 7 – 12, 2016.  This annual conference brings together family searchers, academics, professional genealogists, historians, and a wide variety of individuals form around the world who cherish the heritage and future of the Jewish people.

This year’s conference includes some 325 events during the week– lectures, presentations, meal events and computer workshops – nearly 250 of them hosted by a speaker or panel.

For more information or to register for the conference, click here.

Society for Sefardic Studies Annual Conference in Jerusalem

SefaradOn Tuesday, May 31, 2016, the Society for Sefardic Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem will be presenting its annual conference.
 
“The aim of this conference is to clarify and analyze the Sefardic context of the term “egodocument” and also to expose the variety of literary expressions of egodocuments in Iberia and in the Sefardic diaspora from the middle ages to modern times.”