New Approaches:
Home, Nation, and Landedness in Modern Jewish Identity

A Graduate Student Conference jointly sponsored by
Columbia University's Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies
and the Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies

Dates: Sunday, May 11 through Monday, May 12, 2008

Location: Rosovsky Hall, 52 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Click HERE for the poster

Organizing Committee:
Jessica Fechtor, PhD candidate, Harvard University
Jonathan Gribetz, PhD candidate, Columbia University

Tentative Schedule:

Sunday, May 11

9:30-10am: Breakfast and Registration (Limited spaces available by advanced registration for this breakfast for $17; to reserve, contact newapproaches@gmail.com by April 25th)

10:00-10:30am: Opening Remarks

Session IA: America (Chair: Professor Jonathan Sarna)

10:40am – 12:20pm

1. Rachel Gordan, "Post-WWII American Judaism: How Judaism Became An American Religion"

2. David Koffman, "Aboriginality & Exile: Red Face, Lost Tribes and other Jewish Fantasies of Indians, 1824-1924"

3. David Weinfeld, "What Difference does the Difference Make? The Intellectual Relationship of Horace Kallen and Alain Locke"

4. Sara Ponichtera, "From Cultural Identity to Linguistic Experiment: the Poetry of Yehoash"

Session IB: Intellectual History (Chair: Professor Steven Zipperstein) 

10:40am – 12:20pm

5. Arie Dubnov, "On Diaspora Zionism and 'the need to belong': Sir Isaiah Berlin and the Nationalist Predicament"

6. Bruce Kaplan, "Fly in the Ointment:  Elie Kedourie's Iconclastic Critique and Rejection of Nationalism (Jewish and Otherwise)"

7. William Plevan, "The Exile of the Nations: Homelessness in Martin Buber's Philosophical Anthropology"

8. Claire Sufrin, "Martin Buber and the Biblical Prophets of Zionism"

12:30pm Lunch (Limited spaces available by advanced registration for this lunch for $24; to reserve, contact newapproaches@gmail.com by April 25th)

Session IIA: Europe (Chair: Professor Rachel Greenblatt):

1:30pm – 3:10pm

9. Karen Auerbach, "Between Nation, State and Identity: Communism, Publishing and Polish Jews in Warsaw After the Second World War"

10. Izzet Bahar, "German or Jewish: German –Jewish Scholars in Turkey, 1933-1950"

11. Jacob Labendz, "Re-imagining Zionism and Jews - Domestic, Diffuse and Dangerous: 1967 as a Turning Point in State-Jewish Relations in Czechoslovakia"

12. Chiara Tessaris, "Nation-building and Jewish autonomy in Lithuania: a National State or a State of Nationalities?"

Session IIB: Yiddish (Chair: Professor Naomi Seidman):

1:30pm – 3:10pm

13. Jordana de Bloeme, "The Use of Vilna-based Yiddishist..."

14. Yuri, "Wandering and Homecoming in Rabbi Nachman's Tale of the Seven Beggars"

15. Jessica Fechtor, ""Nation" and "Folk" in the Language Politics of Y. L. Peretz"

Snack Break

3:10 – 3:30pm

Session IIIA: Palestine/Israel (Professor Ronald Zweig):

3:30pm – 5:10pm

16. Eyal Katvan, "Who is the Landlord?": Nationalism and Medical Examinations for Immigrants to Palestine (1919-1939)"

17. Simon Taylor, "'Between Fidelity and Redlichkeit: Leo Strauss's Zionist Synthesis"

18. Ayelet Triest, "Suicide on the Road to Utopia: Pioneers' suicide in the Land of Israel in the 1910s and 1920s"

Session IIIB: Myth and History (Professor Jeremy Dauber):

3:30pm - 5:10pm

19. Alex Kaye, "Building on the ruins of the past: Two aggadic anthologies and the
creation of a Hebrew nation" 

20. Shira Klein, "Altneuland as a 1960s Coffee Table Book"

21. Yehuda Kurtzer, "Politics and Pogroms: Modern Nationalism in Ancient Jewish Historiography"

22. Sara Libby Robinson, "Paying the Blood Tax... in Great Britain, France, Germany, and the US, 1870-1914" 

Dinner and Keynote Address by Professor Jay Harris

(Limited spaces available by advanced registration for dinner for $45; to reserve, contact newapproaches@gmail.com by April 25th)

7-9:30pm

Monday, May 12

9:00-9:30 Breakfast (Limited spaces available by advanced registration for this breakfast for $13; to reserve, contact newapproaches@gmail.com by April 25th)

Session IVA: Jews Among Others (Professor Ilan Troen):

9:30am – 11:10am

23. Jessica Marglin, "Moroccan Jews between French Nationalism and AIU Cosmopolitanism, 1893-1913"

24. Jonathan Sciarcon, "A Golden Age? The Political Horizons of Baghdadi Jews in the 1920s"

25. Jonathan Gribetz, "'Muslim Brothers,' 'Christian Enemies,' and the Creation of (Sephardic) Zionist Identity in Late Ottoman Palestine"

26. Celine Piser, "The Journey Home: Language and Identity in Clarisse Nicoïdski's Lus Ojus Las Manus La Boca"

Session IVB: New Forms of Jewish Nationhood, Real or Imagined? (Professor Yinon Cohen):

9:30am – 11:10am

27. Julian Voloj, "Virtual Judaism: Jewish culture in the virtual world of Second Life"

28. Zohar Rotem, "Israel is for Real: Negotiating the Genuine and the Mythic in an Israel Education Class"

29. Jennifer Heilbronner, "Israelis from San Nicandro: Israel and its New Jews"

Session V: Workshops

11:20am – 1:00pm

Lunch (Limited spaces available by advanced registration for this lunch for $30; to reserve, contact newapproaches@gmail.com by April 25th)

1:00pm

Roundtable and Closing Remarks

2:00 – 3:00pm Roundtable

3:00 – 3:30pm Closing Remarks