UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

12/4 EVENT | Ladino Day 2022: The Future of Ladino
2022-12-04 10:00 - 11:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
Watch the program now:

Scholars, writers, and language activists working to preserve and revitalize Ladino join UW’s Devin E. Naar, Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies, in conversation regarding the future of the traditional language of Sephardi Jews.
On the tenth anniversary of Ladino Day, UW’s Sephardic Studies Program presents four experts from different generations, all working to revitalize Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), the traditional language of Sephardic Jews.
The program will feature, in conversation with Devin E. Naar, Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies:

Karen Gerson Şarhon — editor-in-chief of the Ladino language publication El Amaneser
Nesi Altaras — editor of Avlaremoz, a Turkish-Jewish online magazine
Rachel Amado Bortnick — founder of the Ladinokomunita online community
Eliezer Papo – Ladino scholar featured in the documentary “The Last Sephardic Jew”

View the recording here.
About the speakers

Born in Istanbul, Karen Gerson Şarhon leads all of the projects at the Ottoman-Turkish Sephardic Culture Research Center. In addition to founding that organization, she also earned the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française in 2011 for her contribution to the world culture and her efforts in the preservation of Judeo-Spanish. After earning a BA in English Philology, an MA in Social Psychology and an MA in Applied Linguistics, Karen wrote both her MA theses on the Judeo-Spanish language! Now, you can find her teaching Ladino on social media, proudly serving as editor-in-chief of el amaneser [the only monthly newspaper in the world entirely in Ladino] and of the Judeo-Spanish page(s) of the Şalom newspaper [the only newspaper of the Turkish Jewish community], and singing in the authentic Turkish Sephardic music group she founded: Los Pasharos Sefaradis.
Nesi Altaras is an Istanbuli Jew and editor of Avlaremoz, a Jewish news platform in Turkish. He holds an MA in political science, and his writing in English, Turkish, and Ladino has been published in various outlets. Nesi lives in Montreal where he works as the Digital Engagement Officer for the Institute for Reasearch on Public Policy.

Born and raised in Izmir, Rachel Amado Bortnick 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. She has always actively promoted the preservation of Judeo-Spanish language and culture; in 1985, while living in the San Francisco Bay area, she founded and led the Ladino-speaking club Los Amigos Sefaradis, and subsequently she 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 over 1500 members worldwide.

Born and raised in Sarajevo, Eliezer Papo‘s research centers on Hebrew/Jewish oral literatures, with specialization in the field of Sephardic literatures (oral and written, rabbinic and secular). His book And Thou Shall Jest with Your Son: Judeo-Spanish Parodies on the Passover Haggadah, received the prestigious Ben-Tzvi award. Dr. Papo published around 50 articles, in 10 different languages, about different aspects of Sephardic culture and literature, as well as four works of fiction — one in Ladino and three in Serbo-Croatian.
About the facilitator

Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Chair of the Sephardic Studies Program, 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. As chair, Naar has spearheaded a project to collect, preserve and disseminate the rich Sephardic and Ladino historical, literary and cultural heritage. After serving 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. As a fellow in the Society of Scholars at the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington in 2013-2014, Dr. Naar began his second book project, Reimagining the Sephardic Diaspora. He conducts research in Judeo-Spanish, Greek, Hebrew and French.
Supported by the Lucie Benveniste Kavesh Endowed Fund for Sephardic Studies
Cosponsored by the Departments of History, Linguistics, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Spanish & Portuguese Studies at the University of Washington, as well as Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, the Seattle Sephardic Network, Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, Sephardic Heritage International (SHIN) DC, the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, and the Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington (TACAWA).
The University of Washington is committed to providing access and accommodation in its services, programs, and activities. To make a request connected to a disability or health condition contact Grace Dy at (206) 543-0138 or jewishst@uw.edu at least 10 days before the event.

12/1 EVENT | Israeli Elections Panel
2022-12-01 11:00 - 12:00 | Zoom
Register Now >

On the heels of the fifth Israeli election in four years, the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies’ Israel Studies Program invites you to attend a panel of experts as they debrief the results and talk about what the outcome means—both for the future of Israel, and the world at large. Zoom webinar format. With Noam Pianko—the Samuel N. Stroum Chair of Jewish Studies—moderating, the speakers on the panel include:

Joel Migdal— emeritus professor of Jewish Studies
Liora Halperin— Chair in Israel Studies and professor of Jewish Studies
Alan Dowty— associate faculty of Jewish Studies
Hayim Katsman— Ph.D. and Jackson School alumni
Andrea Gevurtz Arai— associate faculty of Jewish Studies

Register Now >

Joel Migdal is an emeritus faculty member and the Robert F. Philip Professor of International Studies in the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. Dr. Migdal was formerly associate professor of Government at Harvard University and senior lecturer at Tel-Aviv University. His research has been on two tracks–theories of comparative politics, specifically state-society relations, and Middle East politics, with an emphasis on Israel and Palestinians. Joel has published various books and is enjoying his retirement in Eretz Israel.
Liora Halperin is Chair of the Israel Studies Program and a scholar of Jewish cultural and social history, with particular 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 recently published “The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past” (Stanford University Press, 2021), which tells the story of Zionist settler memory in and around the private Jewish agricultural colonies (mashavot) established in late nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine. She received her Ph.D. in history from UCLA in 2011.
Alan Dowty is an affiliate faculty member at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, and is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. From 1963-1975, he was on the faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, during which time he served as Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations and Chair of the Department of International Relations. From 2003-2006, he was the first holder of the Kahanoff Chair in Israeli Studies at the University of Calgary, and from 2005-2007 he was President of the Association for Israel Studies. Among his publications are basic texts on Israeli society and politics (“The Jewish State: A Century Later“) and on the Arab-Israel conflict (“Israel/Palestine,” 4th edition 2017), as well as over 130 scholarly and popular articles. In 2017 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in Israel Studies by the Israel Institute and the Association for Israel Studies.
Hayim Katsman received his Ph.D. in international studies from the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies in 2021. He has researched the Religious-Zionist communities of Israel/Palestine extensively, and written about current trends in Religious-Zionism and its relationship to radicalism. He received his B.A. in philosophy from the Open University of Israel and completed his M.A. thesis on the theology of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginzburg at the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University, where he also served as deputy chair of the Academic Junior-Staff Union from 2015-2017. Follow him on Twitter or on Facebook.
Andrea Gevurtz Arai teaches anthropology and society courses in the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. Arai is currently researching the Israeli social movement “Standing Together” (“Omdim B’yachad”- עומדים ביחד), which advocates for equal justice for Jewish and Arab Israelis and for the reallocation of tax dollars from the military to under-funded areas of social welfare, in particular health care, education and housing. This research will be included in Arai’s in-process edited volume, “Spaces of Creative Resistance in East Asia,” which looks at the local, cross-regional and international particularities of organizations of creative resistance, which advocate for social infrastructures, imagining and creating new forms of social and environmental sustainability.
About the facilitator

Noam Pianko is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies, the Samuel N. Stroum Chair of Jewish Studies, and Professor in the 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. Pianko’s research interests include modern Jewish history, Zionism, and American Judaism.

11/15 EVENT | Territories of Ladino in its Postvernacular Mode: The Case of Poetry and Literary Translation
2022-11-15 15:30 - 17:00 | Denny Hall 213

11/10 TALK | Coffeehouses, Parks, and Neighborhoods: Jews and Muslims in 20th-Century Cairo
2022-11-10 15:00 - 16:30 | Zoom

11/2 TALK | Jews and Muslims in Colonial Algeria: Between Intimacy and Resentment
2022-11-02 15:00 - 16:30 | Zoom

10/26 TALK | The Jews of Medieval Baghdad in the Abbasid Era
2022-10-26 16:00 - 17:30 | Zoom

10/19 TALK | Arabian Judaism and Early Islam
2022-10-19 16:00 - 17:30 | Zoom

10/6 TALK | How the Soviet Jew Was Made — Sasha Senderovich
2022-10-06 16:00 - 17:30 | HUB 214, UW Seattle Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States

6/1 TALK | Silenced Horrors: Sexual Violence During the Holocaust in Ukraine
2022-06-01 11:00 - 12:15 | Zoom

GRADUATE COLLOQUIUM | Reimagining Jewish Narratives in New Contexts: From Antiquity to the Present
2022-05-26 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom

GRADUATE COLLOQUIUM | Political and Archival Policies: International and Local Perspectives
2022-05-24 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom

5/23 EVENT| An Evening with Gadeer Kamal-Mreeh
2022-05-23 19:00 - 20:30 | HUB 145, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States

5/20 SEMINAR | Jewish Writers from 20th-Century Ukraine: In the Shadow of the Holocaust
2022-05-20 10:30 - 12:00 | WA

5/19 WORKSHOP | Nation-State and Citizenship: The Exclusion and Persecution of Greek Jews in Romania Under the National Legionary State
2022-05-19 15:30 - 17:00 | Mary Gates Hall, Room 211B
When someone leaves his or her country of citizenship, who is responsible for their protection: the country in which they now live, or the state to which their passport points?
Join Fulbright Scholar and UW Visiting Lecturer Nikos Tzafleris (Ph.D., University of Thessaly) to workshop his article-in-progress on how this question impacted Jews with Greek citizenship living in Romania in the twentieth century — a time of rising antisemitism and nationalism across Europe. UW Department of History professor James Felak (Newman Center Professor in Catholic Christianity) will serve as a respondent.
Open to graduate students and faculty. Click here to RSVP and to receive Nikos’ paper in advance of the talk. All participants are asked to read the paper prior to the workshop.

About the workshop

The stories of Jews with Greek citizenship living outside the boundaries of Greece are little known. The case of those who lived in Romania, in particular, illuminates Greece’s position towards its extraterritorial citizens.
For decades, Greek Jews of Romania — recognized as Greek citizens — were considered “desirable” to the Greek state as long as they lived in Romania. Yet when it became evident that rising antisemitism in the region would force many of those Jews to sooner or later find refuge in Greece, they were perceived as an imminent danger to the Greek state, and to the integrity of its Greek Christian identity.
This talk follows the stories and vicissitudes of those Greek Jews living in Romania during the turbulent years of 1866-1940, when the rights of Romanian Jews were in constant flux and when the Iron Guard came to power, resulting in a dramatic uptick in antisemitism in the region. This talk will also consider the complex dynamics of Greek diplomats, who could see the danger that Jews with Greek citizenship faced from Romanian antisemitism and impending Nazism, but who also felt compelled to pursue a nationalist agenda.

About the speakers
Nikos Tzafleris is a Fulbright Scholar and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Washington hosted by the Department of History and the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies. His Fulbright project, “The Relief Program of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) in Greece after WWII,” investigates how the AJDC established a relief network to help Greek Jews in the immediate postwar years. He received his PhD from the University of Thessaly.

Read Nikos’ full faculty profile >

James Felak is Professor in the University of Washington’s Department of History and the Newman Center Professor in Catholic Christianity. He teaches courses on the history of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to World War I, and the history of the region from 1918 to the present. He also teaches history of Modern Europe since 1648 and the History of Christianity, as well as seminars on topics such as Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust; the Nazi-Soviet occupation of East Central Europe; and Christians in Nazi Germany. Read Prof. Felak’s full faculty profile >

5/12 STUDENT EVENT| Post-Stroum Lecture Boba and Conversation
2022-05-12 20:15 - 21:00 | Private Location, 1400 NE Campus Parkway, Seattle, WA, 98102, United States

5/12 STROUM LECTURE | Belonging in Question: Jews in the American Civic and Legal Imagination
2022-05-12 19:00 - 20:00 | Kane Hall 220, 4069 Spokane Ln, Seattle, WA, 98195, US

5/10 STROUM LECTURE | Does the United States Have a Jewish Question?
2022-05-10 19:00 - 20:00 | Kane Hall 220, 4069 Spokane Ln, Seattle, WA, 98195, US

5/6 SEMINAR | Jewish Writers from 20th-Century Ukraine: In the Midst of Pogrom Violence
2022-05-06 10:30 - 12:00 | WA

COSPONSORED EVENT | De Inga y Mandinga: A Diaspora Tale from Latin America
2022-04-23 14:00 - 15:15 | WA

4/22 SEMINAR | Jewish Writers from 20th-Century Ukraine: In Anticipation of the Revolution
2022-04-22 10:30 - 12:00 | WA

4/12 TALK | The Rise of Modern Vernacular Hebrew: How Language Shapes Identity (and Vice Versa)
2022-04-12 16:00 - 17:15 | WA
In this talk, linguist Ivy Sichel will discuss the rise of modern vernacular Hebrew in the 1950s and related ideas — how using particular language variety can influence its speakers, and how speakers make the language their own.
Watch the talk now:

About this talk

How did the modern vernacular variety of Hebrew — the informal, everyday version of the language — come to eclipse the prestigious prescriptive variety of Hebrew to become the standard? How does value accrue to particular varieties of a language?
In this talk, Ivy Sichel will analyze the social meanings associated with the new native vernacular of Modern Hebrew, taking a positive stance towards the new native vernacular, which is constructed via differentiation from its alternatives (formal or text-based Hebrew).
The new vernacular is reflexive, and it speaks for itself with the authority of experience, as opposed to the traditional authority of the text. A speaker of modern vernacular Hebrew necessarily, and often unknowingly, possesses a positive attitude towards it, and is an active agent in the propagation of a new collective (of speakers) and its values.
The talk will explore this type of subjectivity, and the ways in which speakers participate in the dissemination of a collective set of ideas about the modern vernacular.
The talk will also explore the consolidation and dissemination of these values by particular individuals, with a focus on Ma Nishma, a weekly column written in Modern Hebrew published in the 1950s.
Event image from the “World Dictionary of Hebrew Slang,” written by Netiva Ben-Yehuda and Dan Ben-Amotz and published in 1982. Via the Jewish Women’s Archive.
About the speaker

Ivy Sichel is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work focuses on syntactic theory. She is also interested in the sociolinguistics of the revival of Hebrew speech, and has written about women’s contributions to the revival project at the turn of the 20th century (with Miri Bar-Ziv Levi), and about the relationship between the revival and the establishment of the State of Israel (with Uri Mor).

4/10 PANEL | Perspectives on Cosmopolitan Istanbul in the Hit Netflix Series, “The Club”
2022-04-10 10:00 - 11:30 | WA
In this virtual panel, scholars Reşat Kasaba (University of Washington), Christine Philliou (UC Berkeley), and Aron Rodrigue (Stanford University) will discuss the historical context and contemporary significance of the hit Turkish Netflix series, “Kulüp” (“The Club”). A recorded interview with “Kulüp” writer Rana Denizer conducted by Melike Yücel-Koç (University of Washington) will also be screened at the event.
This event is supported by the Hazzan Isaac Azose Fund for Community Engagement in Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington.
Watch the panel now:

View the interview with Rana Denizer, conducted by Melike Yücel-Koç

About this talk

Poster for “Kulüp” (“The Club”). (Source: IMDB)
Despite the fraught political climate in Turkey today, Neflix recently released an unprecedented and wildly popular hit series, “Kulüp” (“The Club”), that brings to life the once-cosmopolitan world of 1950s Istanbul.
The show features Turkey’s first mainstream depictions of Sephardic Jewish culture, Ladino language and song, and multidimensional Jewish characters that challenge common stereotypes on the screen in Turkey and the United States. “Kulüp” also tackles difficult questions not only about the position of Jews, but also other non-Muslim populations in Istanbul and Turkey more broadly — especially Greeks.
How does the show depict controversial historical moments, such as the Varlık Vergisi affair, a capital tax imposed by the Turkish state on non-Muslims in 1942, and the “Events of September 6-7,” riots in 1955 targeting Istanbul’s non-Muslims?
What social, political, and cultural factors help explain the emergence of such a poignant depiction of mid-century Istanbul in the 21st century?
These questions, and many more, will be addressed by the panel of experts.
A recorded interview in Turkish (with English subtitles) with “Kulüp” writer Rana Denizer conducted by Melike Yücel-Koç (University of Washington) will also be screened at the event.
About the panelists

Rana Denizer’s family story is the inspiration for “Kulüp.” She began sharing her story first with friends, then on her blog and Twitter under the pseudonym Ranini. She is a lead writer for “Kulüp.”

Reşat Kasaba (University of Washington), Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Professor in American Foreign Policy, is an expert in the history and politics of the Middle East and has taught undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Washington for over 30 years. Kasaba served as the director of the UW’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies for 10 years, completing his tenure in June 2020. He is currently researching history of U.S. foreign policy in Turkey, and the political consequences of rural-urban divide in modern Turkey.
Christine Philliou (University of California, Berkeley) is Professor in the Department of History and Director of the Programs in Modern Greek/Hellenic Studies and Ottoman/Turkish Studies at UC Berkeley. She is the author of two books: Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution (University of California Press, 2011; Greek edition Alexandria Press, 2021; Turkish edition İş Bankası Kültür Press, 2022) and Turkey: A Past Against History (University of California Press, 2021; Greek edition Alexandria Press, 2022). Philliou is currently working on a third book and developing a collaborative digital humanities project, the aim of which is a granular reconstruction and analysis of the Greek Orthodox communities of late Ottoman Istanbul/Constantinople (1821-1923) using a wide range of Ottoman and Greek sources.
Aron Rodrigue (Stanford University) is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History and Burke Family Director of the Bing Overseas Studies Program at Stanford University. He teaches courses in Modern Jewish history, the history and culture of Sephardic Jews, and the Ottoman Empire. His scholarship focuses on the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in modern times, and his writings are considered among the most influential in the field. Rodrigue has held fellowships at the American Academy of Jewish Research, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, among others. He was awarded the honor of Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2013.
About the moderators

Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Associate Professor of History, and is faculty at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in the Henry M. 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.
Melike Yücel-Koç is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington, where she teaches courses in elementary and intermediate Turkish, including Turkish Language and Culture; Turkish TV Series: ETHOS; Oral History: The Stories of Immigrants in the U.S.; and an honors course titled Immigrants from the Middle East in the U.S. She also has academic experience as a graduate teaching assistant at Portland State University, where she served as a Fulbright Scholar, and as a graduate research assistant at Seattle Pacific University. Since 2017, Yücel-Koç has been at work on a research project titled “Turkey in Seattle Oral History Project.”

Presented in partnership with the department of Cinema and Media Studies and the Middle East Center, as well as Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, the Seattle Sephardic Network, Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, and the Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington.

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

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

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

2/24 TALK | "Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx" — Jonathan Israel
2022-02-24 12:00 - 13:30 | WA
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.

2/8 EVENT | The Detention of Uyghur Muslims in China
2022-02-08 12:30 - 13:30 | WA
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.

1/20 PANEL| Scholarly Perspectives — "The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past"
2022-01-20 09:30 - 10:45 | WA
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.

1/19 EVENT| Book Talk & Discussion: “The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past” - Liora R. Halperin
2022-01-19 16:00 - 17:15 | WA
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.

12/12 LADINO DAY | Sephardic Trajectories: Archives, Objects and the Ottoman Jewish Past in the United States
2021-12-12 10:00 - 11:15 | WA
In the University of Washington’s 9th annual Ladino Day celebration, editors of the new book “Sephardic Trajectories: Archives, Objects, and the Ottoman Jewish Past in the United States” discuss the book project, alongside presentations from three contributors to the volume.
Watch the program now:

About this event

How can family heirlooms, papers, and memorabilia help us to understand the process of migration from the Ottoman Empire to the United States? In a newly released edited volume, “Sephardic Trajectories: Archives, Objects, and the Ottoman Jewish Past in the United States” (Koç University Press, 2021), scholars of Ottoman history and Jewish studies explore this question using objects from the UW’s own Sephardic Studies Digital Collection, the world’s largest online collection of Ladino-language books and documents.
To commemorate Ladino Day 2021, join us for an interdisciplinary conversation with Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano (University of Pennsylvania) and Kerem Tınaz (Koç University), the editors of this book, and with Hannah S. Pressman (Director of Education and Engagement, Jewish Languages Project), Maureen Jackson (independent scholar), and Laurent Mignon (University of Oxford), three of the book’s contributors, as they discuss important artifacts and their impact on Ottoman and Jewish history.
About the speakers

Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. His research focuses on intellectual and cultural history of the early modern Ottoman Empire. He is currently working on his first monograph, which examines the relationship among literary composition, Sufi doctrine, and political thought in the early modern Islamic world. He is a co-editor of “Sephardic Trajectories: Archives, Objects, and the Ottoman Jewish Past in the United States.”
Kerem Tınaz is Assistant Professor of History at Koç University where he teaches courses on the history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. His research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of the late Ottoman Empire with a particular interest in identity, ideology, and networks. He is a co-editor of “Sephardic Trajectories.”
Hannah S. Pressman, Ph.D., is a widely published scholar of Jewish languages and literatures. She is currently at work on “Galante’s Daughter: A Sephardic Family Journey,” a memoir tracing her family’s travels from the Levant into southern Africa and beyond, which she highlights in her contribution to “Sephardic Trajectories.” You can find her writings on Jewish culture and Sephardic family history at hannahpressman.com.
Maureen Jackson, Ph.D., is an independent scholar focusing on the urban history of Ottoman, Turkish, and Jewish music. She is the author of Mixing Musics: Turkish Jewry and the Urban Landscape of a Sacred Song (Stanford University Press, 2013), which was awarded the National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture. She has published in both English and Turkish language presses and created the online exhibit Bailar a la Turka: 78 rpm records in Seattle Sephardi Households.
Laurent Mignon is Associate Professor of Turkish language and literature at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of St Antony’s College, and Affiliate Professor at the Luxembourg School of Religion and Society. His research focuses on the minor literatures of Ottoman and Republican Turkey, in particular Jewish literatures, as well as the literary engagement with non-Abrahamic religions during the era straddling the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic.
Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Associate Professor of History, and is faculty at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in the Henry M. 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.
This event is supported by the Lucie Benveniste Kavesh Endowed Fund for Sephardic Studies.

Presented in partnership with the Departments of Anthropology, History, Linguistics, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Spanish and Portuguese Studies; Aki Estamos, Centro Cultural Sefarad, El Amaneser, Ladino 21, Los Shadarim, Şalom Gazetesi, the Salti International Institute for Ladino Research at Bar Ilan University, the Seattle Sephardic Network, Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, and the Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington.
