Jewish Identities
[ Call for Papers ]
Jewish Identities in Contemporary EuropeInternational Conference
Institute of Germanic& Romance Studies, University of London
Monday, 11 to Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Convenors: Professor Lucille Cairns (University of Durham) and Dr Andrea Reiter (University of Southampton)
Deadline: September 1, 2010.
What does being Jewish today mean in European countries such as Austria, France, Germany or the United Kingdom, and to what extent is this experience shaped by factors that lie outside the national context? These are questions to which younger Jewish writers and intellectuals themselves are searching for an answer.
As the intellectual historian Diana Pinto has pointed out, Jews in today’s Europe increasingly see themselves as part of a European community. The reunification of Germany in 1989, the rise of the Historians’ Debate, and, in France, the re-emergence of anti-Semitism in the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of revisionism and negationism, President Jacques Chirac’s public apology in 1995 for the role of the French state in the Shoah, new forms of anti-Semitism since the Second Intifada and, most recently, the war in Gaza, have triggered complex cultural reactions from descendents of Jewish Holocaust survivors in these countries. Meanwhile, immigrant Jews from Russia, Israel or the United States still feel obliged to justify their decision to live in Germany.
There is evidence in the print media, television and increasingly in the internet that Jews are once more playing a significant role in the public sphere of these countries and beyond. This conference will investigate how Jews’ relationships to the country in which they live have been shaped by recent historical/political events. Furthermore, it will demonstrate how Jewish identity in Europe is marked by transnational allegiances, and the extent to which Jews might be seen as leading the way in establishing a post-national existence.
We welcome proposals for papers related to any of the aspects touched upon above. Papers may focus on Jewish writers, philosophers and intellectuals working within the European context.
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Matti Bunzl (Professor of Anthropology, University of Illinois)
Atina Grossmann (Professor of History at the Cooper Union, New York University)
Diana Pinto (Senior Fellow of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research, London)
Shmuel Trigano (Professor of Religious and Political Sociology, Université de Paris X, Nanterre)
Proposals for papers of twenty minutes’ duration, along with a short bio-bibliography, should be sent by 1 September 2010 to the two conference convenors:
Professor Lucille Cairns (lucille.cairns@durham.ac.uk)and Dr Andrea Reiter (air@soton.ac.uk).
Further information: http://w01.igrscms.wf.ulcc.ac.uk/index.php?id=478
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