The UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies will host its third annual Spring Research Symposium on Friday, May 1. This half-day event highlights research by the five members of the 2014-15 Jewish Studies Graduate Fellowship. Each fellow has received funding and mentorship from the Stroum Center to help further their masters- and doctoral-level projects related to Jewish Studies.

This year’s Fellows have interests ranging from from biblical interpretation to Jewish animated short films. You can find bios and blogs posts by each Fellow at their homepage.

Panels at the symposium are chaired by Jewish Studies faculty members. This year’s chairs are Prof. Galya Diment, of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; and Prof. Kathie Friedman, of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

See below for the complete schedule of the 2015 Jewish Studies Spring Research Symposium. You can RSVP here for this terrific showcase of graduate research (the event has sold out every year!):

Graduate Fellows Spring Research Symposium Schedule

May 1, 2015

HUB 214

9:30 – 9:45 am          Welcome

9:45 – 10:45                Panel 1 “New Readings of Jews in Texts”

Chair: Prof. Galya Diment

Summer Satushek (Comparative Religion): “Reading Circumcision as Allegory: Zipporah Enacts a Covenant by Marriage in Exodus 4:24-26”

Christina Sztajnkrycer (French & Italian Studies): “He is Baron, He is Prince, He is King: Portraits of Jews Painted by Nineteenth-Century French Novelists”

10:45 – 11:15             Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:45             Panel 2 “Changing Borders of Identity”

Chair: Prof. Kathie Friedman

Katja Schatte (History): “The End of the Kehillah? Jewish Identity Struggles in Postwar East Germany, 1945-1953”

Justin Shanitkvich (English): “Understanding Space in the Jewish Diaspora: Boundary Play in Jewish Animated Short Film”

Molly FitzMorris (Linguistics): “Cantábamos las mismas kantikas: What I Learned about Seattle Ladino in Buenos Aires”

12:45 – 1:30                Reception