The 2020-21 academic year provided unprecedented opportunities for advancing the Sephardic Studies Digital Collection. We share an update from our Assistant Director and the UW librarians who have made this progress possible.
Graduate fellow Ben Lee explains how machine learning can help historians to learn from the photographs, illustrations and advertisements found in Ladino-language newspapers.
Concern over a shrinking population led Ottoman authorities to undermine reproductive autonomy in the 19th century, writes grad fellow Büşra Demirkol, starting with outlawing abortion and exiling two "bloody" Jewish midwives.
Using census data from the early 20th century, grad fellow Oya Rose Aktaş sketches a portrait Seattle's very first residents from the Ottoman Empire, from 1890-1910.
Read a translation of Albert Levy's poem about bedikat hamets, the Jewish ritual that involves cleaning one's home for Passover.
Matsa ads from American Ladino and Yiddish newspapers compel us to reconsider Jewish food history in the United States.
By making a historic Sephardic songbook available online, graduate fellow Ke Guo hopes to pass on a rich legacy of Sephardic music — and to further our understanding of how Sephardic music has changed over time.
Trace the journeys of eleven Sephardic families with roots in the Ottoman Empire who came to Seattle in the early twentieth century.
