‘Memory, Identity, and Boundaries of Jewishness’, 7-9 July 2013, University of Kent, Canterbury

Deal all,
Boundaries is a crucial topic in Jewish Studies and has been a key
issue since Biblical times, considering the reasons for dietary laws,
prohibition of intermarriage, patrilineal/matrilineal descent etc. But
the question of boundaries is also contested and raises issues of
contrasting imagined communities, along with communal power to police
identity and the limits of belonging. In the modern period and
especially since the Holocaust, the issue of boundaries has taken on new
dimensions. These include the ‘revival’ of cultural expressions of
‘virtual Jewishness’ in sites of memory such as Poland and Germany;
demographic changes brought by population mobility and ‘marrying out’
and the responses of religious authorities to these; complex social and
political relationships between Israel and the Diaspora; multiple forms
of religious and secular identities. These questions are open to
interdisciplinary scholarship in fields such as law, anthropology,
theology, history, religious studies, sociology, literature and cultural
studies. The intention is to encourage contributions on any issues
relating to the interconnections between social and personal memory,
negotiations of identity and contested boundaries from multiple points
of view. This conference aims to create a forum for exploration of these
issues both from within Jewish Studies but also from contributors who
have not previously been involved in BAJS.

Topics and themes might include:

Antisemitism as a marker of boundaries and identities
Biblical and post-Biblical Issues
Body practices and ethnic signals
Converts, conversion and boundary re-drawing
Diversity within Judaism – secular, progressive, Reform,
Conservative, Orthodox and Charedi conceptions of Jewishness
The Holocaust and Jewish Identity
Intermarriage and negotiation of boundaries
Israel and the Diaspora
Jewish Identity and Secularism
Virtual worlds and resources for Jewish identities
Visual stereotypes and modern Jewish identity
Yiddishism in music and culture

Submissions for the conference should reach us no later than 1 March
2013. Abstracts (c.400 words) should be emailed to Larry Ray
l.j.ray@kent.ac.uk. Please include name, institutional and departmental
affiliation, as well as a contact email address.

For further information contact Prof Larry Ray, SSPSSR, University of
Kent, l.j.ray@kent.ac.uk

—
Alvina Hovhannisyan
Yerevan State University
Department of Arabic Studies
Lecturer
1 Alex Manoogian str., 0025 Yerevan, Armenia
Tel: +37410 57 33 30 (work)
email: alvina@ysu.am

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