Get involved: proposal for cross-faculty Centre for Global Jewish Studies
We’re looking for colleagues to get involved in developing a proposal for a new cross-faculty Centre for Global Jewish Studies.
This Centre will promote transdisciplinary discussion of global Jewish cultures, histories, and literatures in all their richness and diversity, addressing the historical underrepresentation of Jewish experience in the UK education system.
The founding interdisciplinary group is keen for involvement from across the University – academics from all faculties and professional services staff, regardless of your personal identification. In this initial call, we want to invite any staff interested to get in touch – whether you’d like to get involved in developing the proposal to the University, or would like to get involved in the Centre longer-term.
Find out more
If you’d like to join the discussion group or find out more, please contact any of the individuals listed below by 21 May 2021.
- Dr Christine Achinger (School of Modern Languages and Cultures)
- Professor Naomi Eilan (Philosophy)
- Dr Ross Forman (English and Comparative Literary Studies)
- Dr Anna Hájková (History)
- Professor Stephen Shapiro (English and Comparative Literary Studies)
- Dr Rochelle Sibley (English and Comparative Literary Studies)
Vision and mission for the Centre
Our initial vision is for a Centre that may host a range of both academic and public-oriented talks and seminars, either on campus or virtually, and curate film or television viewing. These events will be open to staff and students alike, and will engage with both the more dominant areas of global Jewish culture (such as Ashkenazi and Sephardi history and literatures) and those that are less often discussed in UK scholarship (for example, Middle Eastern Mizrahi or Ethiopian Beta Israel history and culture).
Other areas might include events about historical Jewish communities in China and South Asia, historical and contemporary Jewish communities in Latin America, images of gender and gender relations in Jewish history and culture, Jewish foodways, and Jewish/non-Jewish relations.
The mission of such a Centre will be to:
- create a network of research and teaching activity that represents Jewish culture and history in all its forms, but with a particular focus on the global and the transnational;
- articulate the intersections between aspects of Global Jewish Studies and other, established areas of study and research at Warwick, such as the contribution of Yiddish literature to a discussion of World literature and the wider study of diaspora, migration and ethnic minorities;
- To present Jewish history in its wide context, beyond a narrow focus on antisemitism or the Shoah
- provide a forum for undergraduate and postgraduate students to engage with and investigate global Jewish studies in an informal setting;
- bring to better awareness within the Warwick community and beyond the diversity of Jewish Minority Ethnic (JME) experience, history, and culture throughout the globe, encompassing all modes of practice and non-practice of Judaism;
- create a welcoming space for the discussion and appreciation of global Jewish Minority Ethnic experience among the Jewish and non-Jewish identified, and to encourage further engagement, impact, and scholarship among the Warwick community;
- engage with other groups sharing or studying related histories of marginalization and discrimination.