Tuesday, January 28 (Week 4): Tahel Goldsmith (PhD Student, Modern European History, University of Chicago): “Normalcy in the Face of Violence: SS Perpetrators’ Homes.” With a response by Anna Band (PhD Candidate, Modern Jewish History, University of Chicago).

Please join the Jewish Studies Workshop for our final event of the Autumn 2019 quarter, featuring a presentation by

Marsha Morman (MA student, Divinity)

Hillel and Shammai’s Positions on Women in the Mishnah

with a response by Kirsten Collins (PhD Student, Religion, Literature & Visual Culture)

Tuesday, December 3, 5:00 PM, Swift 200

The paper should be read in advance of the workshop. It will be posted on this blog shortly, and the password will be emailed to the Jewish Studies Workshop’s listserv.

Image: BT Kiddushin 29a.

Dear colleagues,

The Greenberg Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, Orietta Ombrosi, is delivering a lecture sponsored by the Greenberg Center tomorrow, November 21, at 5:00 PM in the Swift Lecture Hall. The talk, Sarah Kofman: A Feminine Deconstruction of Judaism, will doubtless be of interest to many Jewish Studies Workshop regulars.

Orietta Ombrosi is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Sapienza University, Rome, and the author of The Twilight of Reason: Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer and Levinas Tested by the Catastrophe (Academic Studies Press, Boston 2012; Fr. ed. 2007); and L’umano ritrovato. Saggio su Emmanuel Levinas (Marietti, Milan 2010). As collected volumes, she has edited Tra Torah e Sophia. Orizzonti e frontiere della Filosofia ebraica (Marietti, Milan 2011); “Jewish Women and the Shoah,” for Bamidbar. Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy (1/2013); Ebraismo al femminile. Percorsi diversi di intelletuali ebree del Novecento (Giuntina, Firenze 2017); and, with Raphael Zagury-Orly, Derrida-Levinas. An Alliance Awaiting the Political (Mimesis International, Paris-London 2018).

Please mark your calendars for this upcoming conference on Monday, November, 18 and Tuesday, November 19 in the Swift Lecture Hall, co-organized by one of the Jewish Studies Workshop coordinators, Mendel Kranz and featuring presentations by visiting faculty as well as Chicago faculty and graduate students. The conference features a keynote address by Aamir Mufti (Professor of Comparative Literature, UCLA): Natives of the Republic: A Genealogy from Drumont to Zemmour.

Please join the Jewish Studies Workshop on Tuesday, November 12 for a presentation by

Joel Swanson (PhD student, History of Judaism, University of Chicago Divinity School)

“A Prototype of the Psychopathic Israelite”: The Psychopathologization of the Wandering Jew in the Fin de Siècle

with a response by Mendel Kranz (PhD student, Philosophy of Religions, University of Chicago Divinity School)

Tuesday, November 12, 5:00 PM in Swift 200

The paper should be read in advance of the workshop. It will be posted on this blog shortly, and the password will be emailed to the workshop’s listserv.

Image: The cover of an undated edition of Eugène Sue’s 1844-1845 novel Le Juif errant. Courtesy of abebooks.com.

TODAY, November 4, please join the Jewish Studies Workshop for a lecture by

Enzo Traverso (Winokur Professor of the Humanities, History, Romance Studies, and Jewish Studies, Cornell University)

The “Jewish Question”: History of a Marxist Debate

5:00 PM, Swift 208. Please note the unusual day and location of the event.

Enzo Traverso is an historian of modern and contemporary Europe. His research focuses on the intellectual history and the political ideas of the twentieth century. His publications, all translated in several languages, include more than a dozen books, including The Jews and Germany: From the “Judeo-German Symbiosis” to the Memory of Auschwitz (Nebraska, 1995); Understanding the Nazi Genocide: Marxism After Auschwitz (Pluto, 1999); The Origins of Nazi Violence (New Press, 2003); Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914-1945 (Verso, 2016); The End of Jewish Modernity (Pluto, 2016); Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory (Columbia, 2017); The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate (Brill, 2018); and most recently The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right (Verso, 2019).