Talks
Bryan Cheyette
Decolonizing testimony: Frederick Douglass and Primo Levi
On 30 April 2025, Professor Bryan Cheyette gave a talk on "Decolonizing testimony: Frederick Douglass and Primo Levi" for the Warwick Centre for Global Jewish studies. The event was moderated by the CGJS director, Dr Anna Hájková
Amanda Shubert
An Iconography of Diaspora: The illuminated Ketubah in British India
Dr Amanda Shubert (Wisconsin Madison) examines the illustrated ketubot, or marriage certificates, of Mizrahi Jews in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Calcutta as visual texts that offer a window onto the Jewish history of the Raj. Known as the Baghdadi Jews of India, this community was established at the turn of the nineteenth century and grew to encompass Jews from Iraq, Syria, and across the Middle East. She argues that the Baghdadi Jews of Calcutta developed a fluid visual iconography that allowed them to articulate a religious, cultural, and ethnic identity as Arab Indian Jews living under the British Raj—an identity that was fundamentally hybrid, intersectional, and emplaced in diaspora. Cooperation of Warwick Centre for Global Jewish Studies, Global History and Culture Centre, and the English and Comparative literary studies department. Moderated by Dr Ross Forman and welcome by Dr Guido van Meersbergen, who also mentions a previous talk by Pragya Kaul (Umich).