11/19 BENAROYA LECTURE | Fighting for Dignity: Migrant Lives at Israel’s Margins
2020-11-19 16:00 - 17:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sarah Willen of the University of Connecticut will give the 2020 Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Lecture in Israel Studies on the topic of global migration to Israel and the Middle East.
This event will take place virtually on Zoom.
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About the talk
In this talk, sociocultural anthropologist Sarah Willen will reflect on nearly two decades of ethnographic engagement with global migrants who arrived in Israel from countries as varied as Ghana and the Philippines, Nigeria, Colombia, and Ukraine. Drawing on fieldwork in homes and in churches, medical offices, advocacy organizations, and public spaces, Willen’s talk will explore how global migrants in Tel Aviv struggle to craft meaningful, flourishing lives despite the exclusions and vulnerabilities they endure. Her work will challenge us to reconsider our understandings of global migration, human rights, Israel and the Middle East— and even dignity itself.
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About the speaker
Sarah S. Willen, Ph.D., M.P.H. is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut and Director of the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at the university’s Human Rights Institute. A former NIMH Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, she holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and an M.P.H. in Global Health, both from Emory University.
Her first book, “Fighting for Dignity: Migrant Lives at Israel Margins” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), was awarded both the 2019 Shapiro Prize for Best Book in Israel Studies from the Association for Israel Studies and the 2020 Edie Turner First-Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology.
Willen has edited or co-edited three books and five special journal collections and authored over 35 articles and book chapters on issues of migration and health, health and human rights, social justice mobilization, medical education, and other topics.
Willen is co-founder of the Pandemic Journaling Project, a combined journaling platform and research study about the lived impact of COVID-19, and Principal Investigator of ARCHES | the AmeRicans’ Conceptions of Health Equity Study, an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods study of how people in the United States think about health, fairness, and social interconnectedness (“health-related deservingness”), funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
This event is made possible through the generosity of the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Fund for Excellence in Israel Studies, and is cosponsored by the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Law, Societies, & Justice, and the Middle East Center and African Studies Program at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

11/24 TALK | In the Bloodlands: History and Memory of the Holocaust in the U.S.S.R.
2020-11-24 16:00 - 17:30 | Zoom

12/1 TALK | Genocide in Myanmar: The Case Before the International Court of Justice
2020-12-01 16:00 - 17:30 | Zoom

12/6 | Ladino Day 2020 — Revolutionizing Ladino: From the Printing Press to the Smartphone
2020-12-06 10:00 - 11:30 | Zoom
The 8th annual Ladino Day at the University of Washington will explore the intersection of Ladino and technology over the last century, and how revolutions in print and on the web have impacted the language over time.
We’ll begin with a multimedia talk by Devin E. Naar, Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies, on the history of the Ladino press in the Ottoman Empire and the United States. Naar will then host virtual conversations with Rachel Amado Bortnick, founder of Ladinokomunita, and Carlos Yebra López, Ph.D., creator of the Ladino module on uTalk, a language learning app.
The program will include a demo of uTalk Ladino led by Yebra López. Throughout the virtual event, audience members can submit questions to be answered by all speakers during a Q&A session at the end of the program.
Please note your time zone if you are tuning in outside of Seattle:
Ladino Day will begin at 10 a.m. PST / 1 p.m. EST / 8 p.m. Israel
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About the speakers
Rachel Amado Bortnick was born and raised in Izmir, Turkey, and came to the United States in 1958 on a scholarship to Lindenwood College (now University) in St. Charles, Missouri, from which she earned a B.A. in Chemistry. She and American-born architect Bernard Bortnick went back to Izmir to get married and subsequently lived in Holland, in Israel, and several cities in the United States before settling in Dallas, Texas in 1988. Rachel is now retired after teaching ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) for 35 years. Rachel has always been active in the preservation and promotion of Judeo-Spanish language and culture. In the San Francisco Bay area she founded and led the Ladino-speaking club Los Amigos Sefaradis, and was featured in the documentary film, “Trees Cry for Rain: a Sephardic Journey.” In 1999 she founded Ladinokomunita, the Ladino correspondence group on the Internet, which now has nearly 1,500 members worldwide.

Carlos Yebra López is a Lecturer in Spanish at New York University, and a Research Assistant in Judeo-Spanish at the University of Birmingham, UK. Since 2017, he is the CEO of Ladino 21, a community-based company devoted to the online documentation, preservation and promotion of Ladino in the 21st century. In 2019 he helped create, launch and promote the first-ever Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) course on any online language-learning platform through a partnership with the uTalk app. This course allows people across the globe to learn Ladino from over 150 different languages.

Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Associate Professor of History, and faculty at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Dr. Naar received his Ph.D. in History at Stanford University and has also served as a Fulbright fellow to Greece. His first book, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. The book won the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Research Based on Archival Material and was named a finalist in Sephardic Culture. It also won the 2017 Edmund Keeley Prize for best book in Modern Greek Studies awarded by the Modern Greek Studies Association.
Supported by the Lucie Benveniste Kavesh Endowed Fund for Sephardic Studies.
Cosponsored by the departments of Linguistics and Spanish & Portuguese Studies, Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, the Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington, Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, the Seattle Sephardic Network, and the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America.

12/8 TALK | Holocaust Lecture Series Concluding Roundtable
2020-12-08 16:00 - 17:30 | Zoom

1/12 COSPONSORED TALK | The Power of Personal Stories: UW Students Grapple with Stories of Survival and Loss
2021-01-12 12:00 - 13:00

1/14 TALK | The Converso's Return: Dalia Kandiyoti in Conversation with Devin E. Naar
2021-01-14 17:00 | RSVP for Zoom link
Dalia Kandiyoti (College of Staten Island, City University of New York) will discuss her new book “The Converso’s Return: Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture.”
To purchase the book at a discount from Stanford University Press, use code Kandiyoti20.
Please note your time zone if you are tuning in outside of Seattle:
This event will begin at 5 p.m. PST / 8 p.m. EST
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About the talk
In the fifteenth century, thousands of Jews in the Iberian Peninsula (today’s Spain and Portugal) were forced to convert to Catholicism under threat of death and became known as conversos (literally meaning “the converted”). Five centuries later, their descendants have been uncovering their long-hidden Jewish roots; as these stories come to light, they have taken hold of the literary and popular imagination. This seemingly remote history has inspired a wave of contemporary writing involving hidden artifacts, familial whispers and secrets, and clandestine Jewish ritual practices pointing to a past that had been presumed dead and buried. “The Converso’s Return” explores the cultural politics and literary impact of this reawakened interest in converso and crypto-Jewish history, ancestry, and identity, and asks what this fascination with lost-and-found heritage can tell us about how we relate to and make use of the past.
About the speakers
Dalia Kandiyoti is Professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She is the author of “The Converso’s Return: Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture” (Stanford, 2020). Her first book, published by University Press of New England, is called “Migrant Sites: America, Place, and Diaspora Literatures.” She has also published articles in scholarly journals and edited volumes on Sephardi and Latinx writing and co-edited a special journal issue entitled “Jewish-Muslim Crossings in the Americas.” Her current work includes an oral history project and an edited volume about Sephardi Jews and the citizenship laws in Spain and Portugal, both in collaboration with Rina Benmayor. This work has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Associate Professor of History, and faculty at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. in History at Stanford University and has also served as a Fulbright fellow to Greece. His first book, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. The book won the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Research Based on Archival Material and was named a finalist in Sephardic Culture. It also won the 2017 Edmund Keeley Prize for best book in Modern Greek Studies awarded by the Modern Greek Studies Association.
Presented in partnership with the departments of English, History, Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Spanish and Portuguese Studies; Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, Jewish Currents Magazine, the Seattle Sephardic Network, Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, and the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies.

1/27 TALK | A Land of Milk and Honey: Biblical Narratives in Modern Israel
2021-01-27 16:00 - 17:00 | RSVP for Zoom link
Ruth Tsoffar (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) will give an online talk exploring the “land of milk and honey” in the Bible, and the way it has been mythologized in modern Israeli discourse.
This talk has already taken place, but a recording is available below.

About the talk
“Life in Citations,” Ruth Tsoffar’s recent book, tells a complicated story about the relationship of secular Israelis to biblical narratives. From the early days of Zionism, the Bible has wielded an immense power as a “primal script,” giving birth to nation, selfhood and Jewish ontology.
The story of the twentieth-century arrival to Zion was conflated with the story of the exodus out of slavery and into the Promised Land. In this talk, Tsoffar will explore the sublime space of milk and honey in the Bible and the way it has been mythologized in modern Israeli discourse. First, Tsoffar will interrogate the utterance of “a land of milk and honey” for Moses through the burning bush in Exodus and the narrative of the twelve spies returning from an expedition to the Promised Land in Numbers.
Numerous examples from art, poetry and the eco-friendly industry of milk will help in tracing the historical development of the “land of milk and honey” from the Bible to various Zionist manifestations, showing how the discourse of milk and honey has been mobilized as the cultural elixir of the nation.
About the speaker
Ruth Tsoffar is a Professor of Women’s Studies, Comparative Literature and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of “Life in Citations: Biblical Narratives and Contemporary Hebrew Culture,” (Routledge, Studies in Comparative Literature, 2019) and the award-winning “The Stains of Culture: An Ethno-Reading of Karaite Jewish Women,” (Wayne State University Press, the Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology, 2006).

2/11 TALK | Outside of the Frame: Enslaved Persons in New Testament Ethics
2021-02-11 16:00 - 17:00 | RSVP for Zoom link
Bernadette Brooten (Brandeis University) will give a virtual talk on the ways early Christian authors sought theologically to form gender and other relationships.
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About the talk
Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
— Colossians 3:18-22
The New Testament books Colossians, Ephesians, Titus, and 1 Peter enjoin either the weaker parties in a household (wives, enslaved persons) or all parties (wives and husbands, children and fathers, enslaved persons and owners) to fulfill their respective duties.
Subordinate persons, however, may well not have been able to fulfill these duties. Could an enslaved child obey their parents when the master or mistress said otherwise? Could an enslaved wife be subordinate to her husband? Would the mistress or master even recognize a relationship that an enslaved wife saw as marriage? Did mistresses treat their enslaved laborers differently from masters?
The answers to these questions will demonstrate that a child is never just a child, but rather an enslaved, freed, or freeborn child, who also differs by gender, and that the same applies to other household members. In this lecture, I will explore how the early Christian authors of these writings sought theologically to form gender, freedom and enslavement, and childhood and parenthood in relation to one another, and how their ideas influenced the ancient world — and our modern one.
About the speaker
Bernadette J. Brooten, Brandeis University Professor emerita, researches Jewish and Christian women’s history in the Roman world; female homoeroticism in the ancient Mediterranean; slavery in early Christianity; and sexual violence, currently in collaboration with Laurie Nsiah-Jefferson.
The Feminist Sexual Ethics Project aims to create Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sexual ethics rooted in freedom, mutuality, meaningful consent, responsibility, and the pleasure of each participant, untainted by slave-holding values. Publications include: Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues (1982, 2020); Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (1996; revised German edition, 2020); and, with the editorial assistance of Jacqueline L. Hazelton, editor: Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies (2010).
Brooten was a MacArthur Fellow and has held fellowships from the Harvard Law School, the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, and many other agencies. In 2014, the University of Bern awarded her a Dr. Theol., honoris causa. She previously taught at the School of Theology at Claremont, the Claremont Graduate School, the University of Tübingen, Harvard University, the University of Oslo, and Williams College.

Protests, Corruption, and Civil Rights During COVID — Israel
2021-02-18 15:00 - 16:00
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Israel experienced two years of intense, multi-generational and cross-sector weekly demonstrations against corruption in the Netanyahu government.
How did a public health emergency that threatens everyone’s health figure into protests against government corruption and other political and social justice issues? How did people and social movements tackle the wide range of issues that have come up during the pandemic? And what are possible effects of the current moment?
This talk uses various visual materials and takes the perspective of the sociology of social movements – how do social movements form, act, and mobilize people – in order to discuss these questions.
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About the speaker
Smadar Ben-Natan is a longtime Israeli human rights lawyer who completed her Ph.D. in the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University. She specializes in law & society and international law, with a particular focus on the intersection of criminal justice, national security and human rights. She holds a Master in International Human Rights Law, with distinction, from the University of Oxford (2011), and an LLB from Tel-Aviv University (1995). She is the 2020-2022 Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel Studies at the University of Washington.

2/25 COLE FELLOW TALK | Minorities and State Violence: The View from the Jews of Medieval Cairo
2021-02-25 16:00 - 17:00 | RSVP for Zoom link
The Stroum Center for Jewish Studies has a proud tradition of supporting early-career scholars through the Hazel D. Cole Fellowship in Jewish Studies. In 2020-2022, Brendan Goldman, an expert in medieval Jewish history, will join our faculty as the Cole Fellow in Jewish Studies.
Brendan Goldman, the 2020-2022 Cole Fellow in Jewish Studies, will look at the history of state violence against minorities by delving into records of the punishment, imprisonment, and expulsion of Jews found in the Cairo Geniza, a cache of thousands of documents found in an Egyptian synagogue.
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About this talk
Today, Jews perceived as white occupy a position of privilege in American society, with powerful allies in the halls of Washington D.C. But before the emergence of concepts of race in seventeenth-century Europe, Jews were a (and sometimes the) quintessential minority in many regions of the Christian- and Islamic-ruled world.
In these contexts, diasporic Jewish communities most often experienced state actors not as advocates or even neutral arbiters; rather, they were the enforcers of Jews’ second-class status. Policemen, jailers and soldiers worked at the behest of Christian and Muslim kings and nobles to imprison, torture, expel and even slaughter Jews. The Jewish sources that record these acts are critical to understanding the evolution of how states have used violence to disempower their most marginalized communities.
This talk focuses on a remarkable cache of personal letters, court deeds and petitions from medieval times preserved in the geniza (storage room) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt. Each section of the talk will focus on a different facet of how Jews and other non-Muslim minorities (known as dhimmis) experienced state violence in the Islamic world. The first section addresses interactions with the police and state courts; the second focuses on institutions of incarceration — prisons and the system of house arrest; and the third and final section deals with state-sanctioned popular violence against Jews.
Goldman’s reflections on this topic will be available for viewing before the live event, which will include a live Q&A starting at 4:45pm. You may watch the pre-recorded video on YouTube here.
Part 1 | Police and State Courts
Part 2 | A Carceral State: Prisons and House Arrest
Part 3 | State Sanctioned Popular Violence
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About the speaker
Brendan Goldman comes to the Stroum Center from Princeton University, where he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Program in Judaic Studies, in addition to coordinating the Comparative Diplomatics Workshop and teaching at Northern State Prison in Newark, New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. in history from The Johns Hopkins University in 2018.
His first book, “Camps of the Uncircumcised: The Cairo Geniza and Jewish Life in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” is under contract with University of Pennsylvania Press and will be published in 2021. His second book project, tentatively titled “A Disciplinary Society: Medieval Prisons through Jewish Eyes, 1000-1300,” examines how documents found in the Cairo Geniza, a synagogue storehouse preserving more than 40,000 medieval writings, can illuminate the ways in which state violence shaped the lives of everyday people during the Middle Ages.

VIDEO | Israel Through a Colored Lens: African American Perspectives on Mizrahi Israelis
2021-03-11 16:00 - 17:00 | RSVP for Zoom link
Bryan Roby (University of Michigan – Ann Arbor) outlines the history of African American thinkers and writers who influenced Israeli society in the 20th century, and how their work has coincided with the process of constructing racial categories within Israel/Palestine.
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About the talk
Bryan Roby’s latest book, “Israel through a Colored Lens: Racial Constructs in the Israeli Jewish Imagination,” explores the shifting boundaries of racial constructs in Israel/Palestine as well as African American intellectual contributions to Israeli sociology and theories on race and ethnicity.
In examining American and Israeli writing, and French colonial archives, Roby will show how and why Middle Eastern Jews became associated with Blackness throughout the 20th century, and what this tells us about the processes of constructing race in modern times.
About the speaker
Bryan K. Roby is an Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. His expertise is on Middle Eastern and North African Jewish history in the modern era. His research interests include the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in Israel/Palestine; 19th and 20th century North African history; and the legacy of French colonialism on Arab and Jewish identity. His first book, “The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle 1948-1966” (Syracuse University Press, 2015), provides an extensive history of social justice protests by Middle Eastern Jews in Israel. “Israel through a Colored Lens” is his second book project.
This virtual event is hosted by the Israel Studies Program at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies. It is cosponsored by the Sephardic Studies Program as well as the Departments of History and American Ethnic Studies.

COSPONSORED TALK | Ethnic Identity & Ethnic Organizing: Darfurian Asylum Seekers in Israel
2021-04-07 09:30 - 10:30

VIDEO | American Christians and the Holy Land: Before, During and After Contemporary Pilgrimages to Israel/Palestine
2021-04-15 16:00 - 17:15 | RSVP for Zoom link
Anthropologist Hillary Kaell discusses American Christian trips to the Holy Land — the history, meaning, and importance of modern pilgrimages to Israel/Palestine.
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About the event

Since the 1950s, millions of U.S. Christians have traveled to the Holy Land to visit the places where Jesus lived and died. Why do these pilgrims choose to journey halfway around the world? How do they react to what they encounter, and how do they understand the trip upon return?
Drawing on five years of ethnographic research with groups of pilgrims before, during, and after their trips, Dr. Hillary Kaell (McGill University) frames the experience as both ordinary — tied to participants’ everyday role as “ritual specialists,” or religious practitioners — and extraordinary, since they travel far away from home, often for the first time.
This talk will examine the kind of Christian education and personal experiences that compel individuals to take the trip, and cover a few key examples of what they find once they arrive. Taking the rare step of following pilgrims after they return home, the talk will also examine whether the trip makes an impact in Christians’ lives over a longer term.
Throughout, the rising popularity of Holy Land pilgrimage is contextualized within changes to U.S. Christian theology and culture over the last sixty years, including shifts in Jewish-Christian relations and the development of a Christian leisure industry. Through explanations of research and context, Dr. Kaell will shed light on how individual Christians make sense of their experiences in Israel-Palestine, offering an important complement to top-down approaches in studies of Christian Zionism and foreign policy.
About the speaker
Hillary Kaell is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Religion at McGill University, where she holds a William Dawson Research Chair. She writes about North American Christianity, often focusing on how Christians make and imagine global connections. She is author of “Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians and Holy Land Pilgrimage” (New York University Press, 2014) and, most recently, “Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States” (Princeton University Press, 2020). She has also collaborated on public education tools including the PBS television series, God in America. More at www.hillarykaell.com and @hillarykaell
This event is made possible through the generosity of the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Fund for Excellence in Israel Studies, and is cosponsored by the Department of Anthropology and Global Christianity Initiative at the Comparative Religion Program in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

VIDEO | Ghetto: The History of a Word
2021-04-22 16:00 - 17:15 | Zoom
This lecture was originally scheduled as an in-person event in 2020, and has been rescheduled as a webinar in 2021.
Daniel Schwartz (George Washington University) will give a talk on the history of the word “ghetto,” from 16th-century Venice to today.
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About the event
Few words are as ideologically charged as “ghetto.” Its early uses centered on two cities: Venice, the site of the first ghetto in Europe, established in 1516; and Rome, where the ghetto endured until 1870, decades after it had been dismantled elsewhere.
Over the nineteenth century, as Jews were emancipated and ghettos were dissolved, the word “ghetto” transcended its Italian roots and became a more general term for pre-modern Jewish life. It also came to designate new Jewish spaces — from voluntary immigrant neighborhoods like New York’s Lower East Side to the holding pens of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe — as dissimilar from the pre-emancipation European ghettos as they were from each other.
After World War II, “ghetto” broke free of its Jewish origins and became more typically associated with African Americans than with Jews. Chronicling this sinuous transatlantic journey, this talk will reveal how the history of ghettos is tied up with the struggle and argument over the meaning of a word.
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About the speaker
Daniel B. Schwartz is an associate professor of history and the director of the Judaic Studies Program at George Washington University. His first book, “The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image,” was co-winner of the Salo W. Baron Prize for the best first book in Jewish studies and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in history.

This event is cosponsored by the Department of History and the African Studies Program at the Jackson School of International Studies.

VIDEO | The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: Dina Danon in Conversation with Devin E. Naar
2021-05-05 17:00 - 18:15 | RSVP for Zoom link
Dina Danon (Binghamton University) will discuss her new book, “The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History.”
View the talk:

About this talk
Across Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, Jews were often confronted with the notion that their religious and cultural distinctiveness was somehow incompatible with the modern age. Yet the view from Ottoman Izmir, a Mediterranean port city, invites a different approach: what happens when Jewish difference is totally unremarkable? What happens when there is no “Jewish Question?”
Drawing extensively on a rich body of previously untapped Ladino archival material, Danon will offer a new read on Jewish modernity. Through the voices of beggars on the street and mercantile elites, shoe-shiners and newspaper editors, rabbis and housewives, this talk will underscore how it was new attitudes to poverty and social class, not Judaism, that most significantly framed this Sepharadi community’s encounter with the modern age.
About the speakers
Dina Danon is associate professor of Judaic Studies at Binghamton University. She holds a doctorate in History from Stanford University. She was recently a fellow at the Katz Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she began work on new project on the marketplace of matchmaking, marriage, and divorce in the eastern Sepharadi diaspora.

Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Associate Professor of History, and faculty at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. in History at Stanford University and has also served as a Fulbright fellow to Greece. His first book, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. The book won the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Research Based on Archival Material and was named a finalist in Sephardic Culture. It also won the 2017 Edmund Keeley Prize for best book in Modern Greek Studies awarded by the Modern Greek Studies Association.
Presented in partnership with Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, the Seattle Sephardic Network, Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, and the Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington; the department of History, and the Middle East Center.

GRAD COLLOQUIUM | Sephardic Experiences of Modernity: Newspapers, Migrants and Midwives
2021-05-19 10:00 - 11:30 | Zoom
Join 2020-2021 Stroum Center graduate fellows Ben Lee, Büşra Demirkol, and Oya Rose Aktaş, as they present their research in Jewish studies:

The Ladino Press: Using Machine Learning to Excavate Visual Content in Historic Ladino Newspapers
Ben Lee, Richard and Ina Willner Memorial Fellow

The Modernization of Education and Its Impact on Midwives: The Case of Jewish “Bloody Midwives”
Büşra Demirkol, Mickey & Leo Sreebny Memorial Fellow

Mapping Early Migration from ‘Turkey’ to Seattle: A Social History of Seattle’s First Ottomans
Oya Rose Aktaş, Rabbi Arthur A. Jacobovitz Institute Fellow

Colloquium Respondent: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania

Learn more about each presenter and their research:

Ben Lee, Richard and Ina Willner Memorial Fellow
“The Ladino Press: Using Machine Learning to Excavate Visual Content in Historic Ladino Newspapers”
Ben is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. His research lies at the intersection of machine learning and human-computer interaction, with application to cultural heritage and the digital humanities. Ben graduated from Harvard College in 2017 and has served as the inaugural Digital Humanities Associate Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, as well as a Visiting Fellow in Harvard’s History Department. He is currently a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. For his fellowship research this year, Ben will be applying his project Newspaper Navigator to historic Ladino newspapers in order to extract and study the content using machine learning. Read about Ben’s research:

“Ladino newspapers are the new wave in ‘uncharted waters’ of digital history” (2021)

Büşra Demirkol, Mickey & Leo Sreebny Memorial Fellow
“The Modernization of Education and Its Impact on Midwives: The Case of Jewish ‘Bloody Midwives'”
Büşra Demirkol is a Ph.D. student the Interdisciplinary Program in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Washington. She received her B.A. degree in sociology at Galatasaray University and her M.A. degree in Turkish studies at Sabanci University. Her master’s thesis focused on modernization in the legal field during the late Ottoman era and its impact on women on the margins. Based on penal codes, codification discussions and court records, she traces how marginal women were redefined and constructed within the boundaries of the public sphere in Ottoman legal culture, and were subjected to the state intervention according to a modern understanding of crime and punishment. Prior to graduate school, she also worked as a social worker with African, Afghan and Syrian refugees in Istanbul and conducted research about the official and unofficial schooling of Syrian children.

Oya Rose Aktaş, Rabbi Arthur A. Jacobovitz Institute Fellow
“Mapping Early Migration from ‘Turkey’ to Seattle: A Social History of Seattle’s First Ottomans”
Oya Rose Aktaş is a Ph.D. student in the University of Washington’s Department of History studying non-Muslim communities in the transition from imperial subject to liberal citizen in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic. Her current research focuses on how state violence targeted at Christians affected the position of Jews in Istanbul, and her project for the Stroum Center graduate fellowship will include work on the Sephardic diaspora in Seattle, Washington. Prior to graduate school, Oya worked on U.S. foreign relations and economic policy at Washington DC think tanks. Read about Oya’s research:

“How Jewish residents of Seattle remembered the Armenian massacres in the Ottoman Empire” (2021)

Colloquium Respondent

Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano, Assistant Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano studies early modern Ottoman intellectual history, and its connections to literature, poetry, and bureaucracy. Aguirre-Mandujano recently co-edited the book “Sephardic Trajectories: Archives, Objects, and the Ottoman Jewish Past in the United States” and is currently working on another book project, “Poetics of Empire: Literature and Political Culture at the Early Modern Ottoman Court.” Oscar is a former graduate fellow of the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies.

GRAD COLLOQUIUM | Tradition and Continuity: Jewish Cultural History Through Art, Music and Travelogue
2021-05-21 10:00 - 11:30
Join 2020-2021 Stroum Center graduate fellows Ke Guo, Abby Massarano, and Jeffrey Haines as they present their research in Jewish studies:

From Home to Zoom: Sustainable Futures for Sephardic Music
Ke Guo, Robinovitch Family Fellow

The Binding of Isaac in Late Antique Synagogues: The Function of Biblical Art in Performing Jewish Identity
Abby Massarano, Robert and Pamela Center Fellow

Tracing Jews in Medieval Kurdistan: Syriac and Muslim Sources as a Window into Jewish History
Jeff Haines, I. Mervin and Georgiana Gorasht Fellow

Colloquium Respondent: Hamza M. Zafer, Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilization

Learn more about each presenter and their research:

Ke Guo, Robinovitch Family Fellow
“From Home to Zoom: Sustainable Futures for Sephardic Music”
Ke Guo is a Ph.D. student in music education with a focus in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington’s School of Music. She was born in Wuhan, China, and studied applied mathematics at UCLA for her B.S. degree. She then obtained an M.S. in management science and engineering from Stanford University and an M.M. in music education from San José State University. Her research in world music education and ethnomusicology has covered topics in both Chinese music and Sephardic music. As a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, she is also active as a concert performer, and has offered individual concerts as well as collaborative concerts in America and Europe. Focusing on the topic of the worldwide transmission and reception of Sephardic music both within and outside of the Sephardic community, she is excited to conduct future field research in the Iberian Peninsula, Turkey, and other countries around the Mediterranean. Read about Ke’s research:

“Rediscovering ‘El bukieto de romansas’: A century of Sephardic folk songs” (2021)

Abby Massarano, Robert and Pamela Center Fellow
“The Binding of Isaac in Late Antique Synagogues: The Function of Biblical Art in Performing Jewish Identity”
Abby Massarano is a graduate student in the School of Art, Art History, and Design at the University of Washington, where she is pursuing her M.A. in art history. Her research is focused on the interplay of image and biblical text in Mediterranean and Near Eastern Abrahamic art in Late Antiquity. She received her B.A in psychology with a minor in art history from Mills College in Oakland, CA. After moving to Seattle, she worked in art conservation and preservation before deciding to return to academia. For her fellowship project, Abby is researching the interplay of text and image in late antique Abrahamic art of the Near East and the Mediterranean through scenes of the Akedah (The Binding of Isaac) in synagogues and other worship spaces. In addition to the Stroum Center graduate fellowship, Abby is also a recipient of the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for Hebrew. Read about Abby’s research:

“Mosaics of the Abraham & Isaac story show how Jews in late antiquity used art to connect with religion and community” (2021)

Jeffrey Haines, I. Mervin and Georgiana Gorasht Fellow
“Tracing Jews in Medieval Kurdistan: Syriac and Muslim Sources as a Window into Jewish History”
Jeffrey Haines is a fifth year doctoral candidate in the University of Washington’s Department of History, having previously completed a double B.A. in history and classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an M.A. in early Christian studies at the University of Notre Dame. His dissertation, “Mosul’s Hinterland: Village and Monastery in Early Islamic Mesopotamia,” examines the history of the rural, multi-religious communities that flourished on the northern edge of the Islamic caliphate through the lens of Syriac monastic histories. As a graduate fellow in Jewish Studies, he will focus on the folklore and culture of the Jewish villages that have existed side by side with Christians, Muslims, Yezidis, and Zoroastrians in this region for centuries. Read about Jeff’s research:

“‘The yoke of the Gentiles is not upon them’: Benjamin of Tudela’s geography of Jews in medieval Iraq and Kurdistan” (2021)

Colloquium Respondent

Hamza M. Zafer, Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilization, University of Washington
Hamza Zafer’s research focuses on the Quran’s engagements with Jewish communities in Arabia, and the portrayal of these communities in the earliest Muslim historical and exegetical writings, up to the 9th century. His first book, “Ecumenical Community: Language and Politics of the Ummah in the Qurʾan,” was published in November 2020.

5/25 | STROUM LECTURES | Reading Jewish Texts in an Age of Climate Change: Grappling with Risk, Reimagining Hope
2021-05-25 16:00 - 17:15 | RSVP for Zoom link
Julia Watts Belser shows how ancient Jewish stories invite us to tangle with grief, confront vulnerability, and re-imagine our survival.
In the 2020 Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies, Professor Julia Watts Belser will use classic rabbinic Jewish texts on political violence, imperialism, and disaster to grapple with pressing contemporary questions about climate change and environmental justice. Bringing disability studies and activism into conversation with queer and feminist theory, these talks will examine how ancient Jewish stories invite us to tangle with grief, confront vulnerability, and re-imagine possibilities for communal survival.

5/27 STROUM LECTURE | Reading Jewish Texts in an Age of Climate Change: The Afterlives of Noah’s Ark – Gender, Disability & the Politics of Survival
2021-05-27 16:00 - 17:15 | RSVP for Zoom link

10/14 TALK | Book Launch: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture - Mika Ahuvia
2021-10-14 16:00 - 17:15
In a discussion with author and journalist Sigal Samuel, faculty member Mika Ahuvia will discuss the large role that angels played in the ancient Mediterranean world, drawing on her recent book, “On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture.”
Watch the conversation now:

About this talk
Mika Ahuvia’s new book on angels in ancient Jewish culture examines a common element of Jewish practice that is often overlooked or dismissed: angels, the invisible beings who serve as intermediaries, guardians and role models for humans.
In a conversation with author and journalist Sigal Samuel, Ahuvia will explain how angels have extended humans’ experience of the divine beyond scriptures and synagogue walls across time, and how related practices — including magical invocations — illustrate the many ways in which people have practiced Judaism and Jewishness throughout history. Learn more about the book.
About the speakers
Mika Ahuvia researches the formative history of Jewish and Christian communities in the ancient Mediterranean world. Specializing in Late Antique Jewish history, she works with rabbinic sources, liturgical poetry, magical texts, early mystical literature, and archaeological evidence.
Her new book, “On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture,” investigates conceptions of angels in foundational Jewish texts and ritual sources, and uncovers how angels made their way into the practices and worldview of ancient Jews. Ahuvia teaches courses in Jewish Studies, comparative religion, and global studies in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and is also the Stroum Center’s Undergraduate Program Coordinator.

Sigal Samuel is senior reporter for Vox’s Future Perfect project, and co-host of the Future Perfect podcast. She is also the author of two books. “Osnat and Her Dove,” a children’s book, tells the true story of the world’s first female rabbi. “The Mystics of Mile End,” a novel, tells the story of a dysfunctional family dealing with mysticism, madness, and mathematics in Montreal. The book was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award and won a Canadian Jewish Literary Award. Sigal earned her M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and her B.A. in philosophy from McGill University.

11/16 COSPONSORED TALK | Was the Biblical Joseph on the Spectrum?
2021-11-16 16:00 - 17:00

11/18 BENAROYA LECTURE | Analyzing the Israeli COVID-19 Response in Context: Social, Historical and Ethical Perspectives
2021-11-18 20:00 - 21:00
Image: Wheel of public health interventions, developed by the Minnesota Department of Health (2019).
Nadav Davidovitch, Professor of Health Systems Management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, gave the 2021 Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Lecture in Israel Studies, discussing Israel’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in conversation with Abraham Flaxman, Associate Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington.
Watch the presentations now:

About this talk

Nadav Davidovitch, a public health professor and epidemiologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, will explore the different meanings of public health from historical, sociological, political and health policy perspectives, focusing on several case studies from the Israeli perspective, from the 1950s absorption of mass immigration and related vaccination and public health efforts to the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the present day.
In conversation with Abraham Flaxman, UW professor of global health, Davidovitch will discuss the interaction between scientific advisory committees and policy makers, and pressing issues including health inequities, the influence of politics, and the role of trust and solidarity in public health practices and policy-making.
About the speakers

Nadav Davidovitch, M.D., MPH, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist and public health physician. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Systems Management in the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Guilford-Glaser Faculty of Business and Management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He teaches on health policy, public health, health promotion, the Israeli healthcare system, public health ethics, and global health. He is also affiliated with the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at the School of Public Health, Columbia University, NY, and with the School of Public Health, University of Illinois – Chicago.
Abraham Flaxman is Associate Professor of Global Health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, where he is currently leading the development of new methods for cost effective analysis through microsimulation. Prior to becoming an associate professor, Dr. Flaxman was a post-graduate fellow at IHME, and before that he was a post-doctoral fellow at Microsoft Research. Originally from Evanston, IL, Dr. Flaxman earned his B.S. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned his Ph.D. in algorithms, combinatorics, and optimization from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006. Dr. Flaxman has written his popular blog, Healthy Algorithms, since 2008. His posts cover mathematics, computer science, and his research at IHME.
This event made possible through the generosity of the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Fund for Excellence in Israel Studies, and is cosponsored by the Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology and the Population Health Initiative at the University of Washington, and by Americans for Ben-Gurion University.

1/19 EVENT| Book Talk & Discussion: “The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past” - Liora R. Halperin
2022-01-19 16:00 - 17:15
In this event, faculty member Liora R. Halperin will discuss her new book, “The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past,” and the creation of historical narratives around Jewish settlements in Ottoman Palestine, with Stroum Center Director and fellow faculty member Noam Pianko.
About this talk

In her new book, “The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past,” Liora R. Halperin looks at the history of moshavot, Jewish agricultural settlements in Ottoman Palestine, and the ways in which the history of these settlements has been folded into the story of the State of Israel in the early 20th century.
Beginning in the late 1870s, Jews from the religious communities of urban Palestine, joined in the 1880s by migrants from the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire and other parts eastern Europe, began to purchase land and establish private agricultural colonies in Ottoman Palestine, with the goal of creating productive, self-sufficient Jewish communities. Though these agricultural colonies predated the Zionist movement of the late 1890s, they served as hubs for subsequent Jewish migrants and later came to be seen as the first Zionist wave of Settlement, or “First Aliyah.” Yet, because of their more religious or socially traditional ethos and use of Arab workers, the stories and ideas surrounding these private settlements were often at odds with later Zionist movements, especially Labor Zionism and the call for “Hebrew Labor.”
In a conversation with Noam Pianko, Professor of Jewish Studies, Halperin will discuss the stories around these Jewish settlements, how they fit into the broader story of Zionism, and how she reconstructed this history via a wide range of sources.
About the speakers

Liora R. Halperin is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at the University of Washington, and has scholarly interests in nationalism and collective memory, language ideology and policy, and Jewish-Arab relations both in Ottoman and Mandate Palestine and in the early years after Israeli statehood. Her first book, “Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine” (Yale University Press, 2015), was awarded the Shapiro Prize from the Association for Israel Studies for the best book in Israel Studies. She has published academic articles in The Journal of Social History, Jewish Social Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and The Jewish Quarterly Review, among other venues. She received her Ph.D. in history from UCLA in 2011, and is the Benaroya Chair of the UW Israel Studies Program.
Noam Pianko is the Samuel N. Stroum Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. Pianko also directs the Samuel and Althea Stroum Center for Jewish Studies and serves as the Herbert and Lucy Pruzan Professor of Jewish Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies & Judaic Studies from Yale University in 2004. His most recent book, “Jewish Peoplehood: An American Innovation” (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2015), won the American Jewish Historical Society’s Saul Viener Book prize, and traces how the concept of “peoplehood” emerged at the beginning of the last century as an American-Jewish innovation calibrated to shape discussions of nationalism, Zionism, and American Jewish identity.
This event is cosponsored by the Department of History at the University of Washington.

1/20 PANEL| Scholarly Perspectives — "The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past"
2022-01-20 09:30 - 10:45
In a panel conversation, three scholars will offer responses to and commentary around faculty member Liora R. Halperin’s new book, “The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past,” and how the history of early Jewish settlements in Ottoman Palestine has been folded into the story of the State of Israel.
About this talk

In her new book, “The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past,” Liora R. Halperin looks at the history of moshavot, Jewish agricultural settlements in Ottoman Palestine, and the ways in which the history of these settlements has been folded into the story of the State of Israel in the early 20th century.
In this panel conversation, scholars Alon Confino (University of Massachussetts Amherst), Nahum Karlinsky (Ben-Gurion University), and Sherene Seikaly (UC Santa Barbara) will offer their responses to the book, connecting it to broader understandings around the processes of creating history and historical narratives, in particular as these relate to the State of Israel.
About the speakers

Alon Confino is Director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, and Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His recent books include “Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust As Historical Understanding” (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2012) and “A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide” (Yale University Press, 2014). He studied at the University of Tel Aviv and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley.
Nahum Karlinsky is a Senior Lecturer at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, where he has taught numerous courses on Israeli identity, the social, cultural and urban history of Israel/Palestine, and post-Zionism, neo-Zionism and Jewish fundamentalism. In 2006-2007, he was chair of the Israel Studies Program at Ben-Gurion University. In 2008-2009, he was a fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2008, he has been affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and MISTI-Israel as a visiting associate professor at MIT’s Political Science Department. He is currenly a visiting professor at Boston University.
Sherene Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In her forthcoming book, titled “From Baltimore to Beirut: On the Question of Palestine,” she will follow the trajectory of her great grandfather. Traveling with her ancestor from his nineteenth century mobility across Baltimore and Sudan to twentieth century immobility in Lebanon, Seikaly places the question of Palestine in the context of a global history of race, capital, slavery, and dispossession. She is co-editor of Journal of Palestine Studies and co-editor of Jadaliyya.
Liora R. Halperin is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at the University of Washington, and has scholarly interests in nationalism and collective memory, language ideology and policy, and Jewish-Arab relations both in Ottoman and Mandate Palestine and in the early years after Israeli statehood. Her first book, “Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine” (Yale University Press, 2015), was awarded the Shapiro Prize from the Association for Israel Studies for the best book in Israel Studies. She has published academic articles in The Journal of Social History, Jewish Social Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and The Jewish Quarterly Review, among other venues. She received her Ph.D. in history from UCLA in 2011, and is the Benaroya Chair of the UW Israel Studies Program.
This event is cosponsored by the Middle East Center and the Department of History at the University of Washington.

2/8 EVENT | The Detention of Uyghur Muslims in China
2022-02-08 12:30 - 13:30
In this event, UW alum Darren Byler, Ph.D., will draw on his research, fieldwork, and first-hand experiences to explain the scope and impact of China’s detainment of Uyghur Muslims in forced labor camps, in conversation with UW Professor Emerita Sandra Silberstein.
About the speakers

Darren Byler is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University. His recent book, “Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City” (Duke University Press, 2021) is based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Uyghur homeland in Chinese Central Asia, and examines the impact of detention and surveillance on Uhgyur and Han male migrants. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Washington.
Sandra Silberstein is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Washington, where she researches rhetoric in times of national crisis and discourses around terrorism; linguistic constructions of gender, race, ethnicity; critical applied linguistics and second language studies.

This event is cosponsored by the Center for Human Rights, the China Studies Program, and the East Asia Resource Center at the University of Washington.

2/24 TALK | "Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx" — Jonathan Israel
2022-02-24 12:00 - 13:30
In this online webinar, intellectual historian Jonathan Israel will discuss his recent book, “Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx” — part of the University of Washington Press’ Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies series — and the idea that revolutionary movements of the 18th and 19th centuries were deeply rooted in Enlightenment philosophy, particularly the works of Jewish thinkers like Baruch Spinoza.
The talk will be facilitated by Michael Rosenthal, Grafstein Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto and UW Emeritus Professor of Philosophy.
Watch the webinar now:

About this talk

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, a small but conspicuous fringe of the Jewish population became the world’s most resolute, most intellectually driven, and most philosophical revolutionaries, among them the pre-Marxist Karl Marx. Yet the roots of their alienation from existing society, and their determination to change it, extend back to the very heart of the Enlightenment, when Spinoza and others living in a rigid, hierarchical society first developed a modern revolutionary consciousness.
Drawing on his recent book, “Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx: The Fight for a Secular World of Universal and Equal Rights,” part of the University of Washington Press’s Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies series, leading intellectual historian Jonathan Israel will show how the radical ideas in Marx’s early writings were influenced by this legacy.
Israel will also consider how writers of the “Radical Enlightenment” understood Jewish marginalization and ghetto-ization — and the forces of superstition, prejudice, and ignorance that sustained these structures — and how the quest for Jewish emancipation led “revolutionary” thinkers to formulate theories of social and legal reform, paving the way for later revolutionary actions that helped to change the world from the French Revolution onwards — though perhaps not in the ways these thinkers intended.
About the speakers

Jonathan Israel is professor emeritus in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. His many books include “European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–1750” and “Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750.” He delivered the 2017 Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies, which focused on Spinoza as a revolutionary thinker and the idea of the “Radical Enlightenment” and the Jewish Emancipation.
Michael A. Rosenthal holds the Grafstein Chair in Jewish Philosophy, with appointments in both the Department and the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. Prior to joining the department, he was professor of philosophy and Jewish studies at the University of Washington at Seattle. He teaches and publishes in the areas of early modern philosophy, ethics, political philosophy, and Jewish philosophy. Michael’s current research focus is Spinoza’s political philosophy, both in relation to central issues in Spinoza studies and Spinoza’s engagement with the Jewish Philosophical Tradition, particularly Maimonides. Michael is also interested in the reception of Spinoza in subsequent Jewish philosophy including Moses Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1996.

3/10 COSPONSORED EVENT | Negotiating Carceral Regimes - "All Things Being Equal": Mobile Extractions in a Carceral World
2022-03-10 16:30 - 18:00

3/11 COSPONSORED EVENT | Negotiating Carceral Regimes - Colloquium: "Interior Frontiers and the Entrails of Inequality"
2022-03-11 12:00 - 13:30

3/31 COSPONSORED EVENT | Negotiating Carceral Regimes: Why Is It So Hard to Shrink the Carceral State?
2022-03-31 16:30 - 18:00
