Call for Papers: Western Jewish Studies Association Conference, Tempe Arizona, May 5-6, 2024, deadline for submissions: 6th January 2024

Call for paper and panel proposals in all areas of Jewish Studies regardless of discipline, geographical focus, or period.  The WJSA always devotes some panels to Jews in the American West, pedagogical aspects in Jewish Studies, and contemporary Jewish issues.  Panels devoted to major anniversaries of events in Jewish history or birthdays and Yahrzeits of important Jewish individuals in 2024 are welcome.

Faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars of Jewish Studies are invited to submit proposals for papers, panels, and roundtable discussion. Paper proposals should be no longer than one double-spaced typed page and should be submitted with a short CV that contains contact information. Organizers of panels and roundtable discussions should submit a cover sheet with the title of the session, the titles and abstracts for each paper and bios and contact information of the participants. Individuals wishing to chair a session should indicate their area of expertise and submit a short CV.  A few partial travel stipends are available for graduate students and overseas scholars presenting at the conference.

The conference will be primarily in-person, though there will be one entirely virtual panel in each morning time slot reserved for overseas presenters.

The WJSA bestows the Baron Award for the best graduate student paper presented at the conference.  The winner receives $200.

Although there is no WSJA membership requirement for participation in the conference, a higher registration fee is charged for non-members.  Deadline for submission of proposals is January 6, 2024.  Proposals should be sent to Laurie Baron, lbaron@sdsu.edu

Call for Papers and Participants

27th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites
Proximities & Gaze

28 October to 3 November 2024, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Deadline for applications: 25 January 2024

We cordially invite you to apply to the 27th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites in partnership with the Department of Political History at Utrecht University – to be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, from the 28th of October to the 3rd of November 2024. The workshop will explore “proximities” and “gaze” as analytical categories for the study of the Holocaust, NS concentration camps, and killing sites.

The Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites has been held annually since 1994. This international workshop, organized by and for emerging scholars and Holocaust educators, provides an interdisciplinary and non-hierarchical forum dedicated to research on National Socialist camps and killing sites. In particular, the topics of persecution, isolation, forced labor, mass murder, and the Holocaust, as well as their representation in various memorial cultures, are discussed. The goal is to promote a collective, cooperative, and supportive atmosphere to share and discuss ideas, knowledge, and methodologies in innovative, comparative, and transdisciplinary ways based on a variety of sources. To guarantee low hierarchies during the workshop, the program exclusively invites applicants who do not hold a PhD when they apply (i.e. Ph.D. candidates, MA students, and Holocaust educators). To maintain the workshop’s continuity and sustainability, every candidate is allowed to attend three times: as speaker, participant, and organizer.

Visual records have changed the collective imagination of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and other concentration camps. Philosopher Susan Sontag has written on the impact of seeing photographs of concentration camps. In her work, she expresses that nothing she had seen before had touched her so directly, deeply and brutally as these photographs. The wartime and post-war circulation of Holocaust photographs has had informative and propagandistic purposes. Some of the visuals became iconic – they have been reproduced, received notoriety and have, at times, been separated from their initial and intended contexts. Despite historical attitudes towards photography and film as objective documents we, as audiences, do not always know what we are gazing at. Was the photograph taken by a perpetrator, a victim or a bystander? For which purpose and under which circumstances was it captured? Whose gaze were the visual records intended for? Moreover, visual materials such as film and photographs demand that the viewer challenges and analyses traces of the Holocaust critically. They also demand that we question our own position as viewers. Pictures, for instance, can minimise the distance between the viewer and what is being depicted – conversely making clear that a certain separation exists amidst the observer and the portrayed
 
events. What, therefore, does this proximate relation consist of and – perhaps most pivotally – what is absent from the presences shown in visual material?

In Westerbork, the Netherlands’ largest transit camp, one of the prisoners, a German Jew named Werner ‘Rudolf’ Breslauer, was tasked by the camp commandant to film everyday life in the camp for internal propaganda purposes. In one of his films, he captured a young girl looking through the bars of a cattle car door. When this still from Breslauer’s film became known after the war, many assumed that the person depicted in it was Jewish. Decades later, however, the girl was identified as Anna Maria Steinbach – better known as Settela – a Sinti victim of the Holocaust. Since this discovery, the image of Settela’s face, peering out from the slit as if to implicate the viewer, has become a symbol of the Roma and Sinti genocide. Settela’s startling gaze provokes uncanny feelings in those who, contemplating her arresting eyes, are fully aware of the events which are about to befall this ten-year-old. It is May 19th 1944 and the viewer is gazing upon a process of deportation, leading to murder. The dynamic created by Settela’s look and our act of gazing introduces the themes of this year’s workshop: Proximities & Gaze.

During this workshop, we aim to explore all aspects of seeing, visual witnessing, spectating, observing, and gawking in/or out of proximity to camps and killing sites during the Holocaust. Our goals are to highlight innovative research and projects, visit Holocaust related sites (e.g. the Amsterdam Jewish Quarters, Westerbork, Amersfoort) in the Netherlands, and share methodologies and tools used in the study of NS camps, ghettos, and killing sites (including Holocaust geographies and visual studies).

Application
The 27th workshop will bring together emerging scholars and educators whose research connects to the workshop themes of “Proximities and Gaze” before, during, and after the Holocaust. We welcome papers that explore the history and memory of concentration and death camps, ghettos, and killing sites. We will focus on questions such as:
• How did being in proximity to the non-Jewish/non-Sinti and Roma population and/or “Aryan side” during WWII impact survival attempts (escape, hiding, rescue/aid, collaboration)? How did the process of alienation and segregation of targeted victims from the surrounding population and world facilitate mass murder during the genocide?
• Was there a Jewish gaze or Jewish eye during or after the Holocaust (photography/film, hiding, documenting)? What does the perspective of the victims add to our understanding of the events?
• How did distance and proximity shape the experience of the victims, perpetrators, and bystanders of the genocide? Specifically, what does it mean to stand “by” or live in proximity to a site of violence and/or a killing site?
• How did acts of watching/observing victims from targeted populations enable the implementation of the Holocaust (policing, surveilling, and denouncing, by collaborators, perpetrators, and neighbours)?
• How did secrecy, euphemisms, and the concealment of crimes during the deportation of victims to camps and killing sites in the East (being hidden from gaze and out of proximity to the Western world) aid the perpetrators in carrying out the genocidal process? What does it mean to see the absence of neighbours in this process?
 
• How can one analyse the faculty of seeing (onlookers, spectators, observers, gawkers) in relation to violence and killing? How to use visual turn methodologies in researching genocide and its memory?
• What affective response does proximity to traumatic events evoke? What does it mean to be empathic towards the victims?
• What role did gender, libidinal pleasure, and sexuality play in the act of gazing at violence, killings and dehumanisation (male/female gaze, etc.)?
• What are the proximities and differences between Holocaust and Postcolonial Studies? How to conceptualise the “colonial gaze” in both contexts (backwardness; civilised and uncivilised; race and racism; class/national superiority)? In what ways did colonial crimes affect the Holocaust and post-war memory/history of the Holocaust?
• How are different forms of gazing used in visual arts, literature, and in the spaces of memorials and museums?
• How to research visual materials from/about ghettos, camps, and killing sites? How to avoid following or featuring the perpetrators’ gaze in approaching Nazi propaganda materials, such as films and photos?
• How does the study of the Holocaust and, by extension, WWII, utilise geography, topography and mapping to portray closeness to genocidal events?

The workshop is not exclusively dedicated to the themes listed above and remains open to a wide array of interests related to the study of the Holocaust, including those which place the history of concentration camps, killing sites, and ghettos at the heart of their study. Above all, participation is not restricted to doctoral students only and we strongly encourage early career archivists, Holocaust educators, curators, and museum professionals to apply. We particularly welcome applicants from underrepresented communities, as well as those from the Global South, Ukraine, and other Eastern European countries.

• Individuals who wish to apply to present their research as speakers are requested to submit a one-two page CV, a bio (max 150 words), and an abstract of their proposed paper (300-500 words).
• Those applying as participants should submit a one-two page CV, a bio (max 150 words), and a motivation letter (300-500 words) indicating the workshop’s relevance to their research or professional activities and their interest in participating.

All submissions to the workshop should be in a single PDF and emailed directly to
workshopnscamps2024@gmail.com by the 25th of January 2024.

The presentations and discussions will be held in English and should not exceed 20 minutes. We appreciate more open and innovative formats of presentation. After the presentations, there will be extensive time for discussion. We are currently applying for funding to cover the costs of the workshop, as well as accommodations and travel costs. It is our goal and intention to cover the full cost of attendance for all invited speakers and participants; however, funding will be prioritised for applicants who demonstrate financial need in an optional personal statement submitted with their application (if applicable). We are willing to accommodate special needs (e.g., childcare or dietary restrictions) according to our funding possibilities. All confirmed speakers and participants must attend the entire workshop. Following the conference, we intend to publish a selection of the papers/projects presented.
 
For further information on the workshop, please consult our website: workshopnscamps.com. If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact the Organising Team at: workshopnscamps2024@gmail.com.

Organising Team:
Dmitri Abrahams (University of Cape Town)
Linda Dotterweich (Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies) Lauren Fedewa (University of Toronto)
Katarzyna Grzybowska (Jagiellonian University)
Aliena Stürzer (Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten) Nils Weigt (Fritz Bauer Institut)
Alexander Williams (University of Groningen)

Organised in cooperation with the Department of Political History at Utrecht University, with the support of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Leicester and the Stiftung Zeitlehren

16th Contact Day Jewish Studies on the Low Countries

Institute of Jewish Studies – University of Antwerp

Thursday 23 May 2024

Deadline: 15 January 2024

The Institute of Jewish Studies organizes for the sixteenth time an interdisciplinary conference at the University of Antwerp concerning Jewish Studies on the Low Countries. The purpose of the conference is to facilitate contacts between researchers working within this area of study. We especially encourage young researchers to participate in the workshop. We also hope for contributions from more established researchers, in order to create a positive exchange between different research generations. We particularly invite papers and/or sessions that are explicitly comparative in character, and welcome themes and disciplines within Jewish Studies concerning the Low Countries. Proposals need not be limited to a specific historical period and presentations may include work in progress. Both individual and panel proposals are possible. The conference language is English. Please note that the conference organizers cannot provide financial support to cover travel and accommodation of presenters or participants. Please submit an abstract of maximally 400 words and a short CV by 15 January 2024.

For further information please contact:

Karin Hofmeester: kho@iisg.nl

Veerle Vanden Daelen: veerle.vandendaelen@kazernedossin.eu

Call for Papers

Conference in Mainz (Academy of Sciences and Literature)

17–20 June 2024

Creating Holiness: Books, Scrolls and Icons as Carriers of Sacredness

Every written culture has its sacred texts. Through the regular reading of these texts, which is usually guided by a fixed rite in the same direction, a group of people reassures themselves of their community and constructs a place of cultural identity beyond the profane. The sacred text not only defines the respective beliefs, but also represents the physical expression of divine revelation, and is often itself revered as a representative of the divine in ritual. Such a text has a special quality as a manuscript, since its value can be increased not only by the high quality of the material and decoration, but also by the extraordinary virtues of the scribe and the circumstances of the act of writing itself. There are notions of what requirements such a scribe should fulfill and what rituals writing itself is subject to. The process of writing becomes a sacred act, a divine service, or an ascetic practice.

This conference will address the questions of what turns a book – or an icon of the Eastern churches – into a sacred object in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist cultures, and how is sacredness connected to the material.

· Are there material elements – writing surfaces, inks, colors, letterforms – that are preferred in the making of the sacred artifact? What expectations, memories, or theological concepts are associated with the material?

· Is the manufacturing process subject to ritual rules? What requirements are imposed on the scribe? Is the scribe distinguished by a certain way of living or a special position within society?

· What does the special handling of the sacred writings and icons, their veneration and performative choreography within the liturgy or prayer tell us about their functions within the religious community?

· How are the sacred artifacts received? Are there legends about the scribes and the documents they produced? How are narratives about the magical potential of sacred objects to be assessed?

Travel and accommodation costs can be covered by the organizers on behalf of the ToRoll project.

Please send your abstract (150-200 words) to PD Dr Annett Martini by December, 15th 2023: amartini@zedat.fu-berlin.de. Visit our website for

more information about the research project ToRoll: Materialized Holiness: https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/materialisierte-heiligkeit/index.html

CfP: Expanding the Boundaries: Jewish Artistic Heritage of Ukraine (Kharkiv, Ukraine, April 9–10, 2024)

The conference is supported by the European Association for Jewish Studies.

The Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies is announcing an international conference dedicated to understanding Jewish art and the artistic heritage originating from Ukraine in broader historical, cultural, and artistic contexts.

Over the years, Jewish traditional and modern culture associated with the territory of present-day Ukraine has been shaped by various political and cultural conditions. Ashkenazi Jews, Krymchaks, and Karaites lived here and left a distinctive cultural and artistic legacy.

Along with religious there was also secular Jewish life, both of which found expression in art. The artistic achievements of the Jews of Ukraine – in all their diversity of genres, schools, groups, and personalities – were created, over time, in the frameworks of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and finally, since 1991, in independent Ukraine. Now they are perceived as a part of Ukraine’s multicultural heritage.

This perspective leads us to undertake two tasks. The first is the desire to recreate the history of Jewish art in Ukraine by studying the emergence, development, and spread of Jewish artistic culture within the modern borders of Ukraine. In the twentieth century, this culture suffered catastrophic losses. The very memory of the life and culture of millions of local Jews was erased layer by layer. Many art objects from Ukraine are in museums around the world. The inclusion of this complex in scholarly discourse will bring back to Ukrainians the memory of the historical presence of Jews in the multicultural space of their country.

The second task is to consider the problem of protecting Jewish heritage from destruction. It is impossible to prevent missile attacks and artillery shelling in the frontline zone and looting in the occupied territories. The impossibility to provide physical protection prompts us to look for other ways to preserve our heritage. We are talking about recording, attribution, inclusion in the narrative, and presentation of art objects both by traditional means and with the help of the new media. Researching threatened or already lost artistic works and phenomena in museums, libraries, and archival collections will help preserve the memory of Jewish artifacts and their provenances.

The conference will focus on the historical, theoretical, and methodological aspects of the identification, research, contextualization, and musealization of Jewish art created in Ukraine or by authors from Ukrainian lands. The event will help increase interest in the Jewish heritage of Ukraine and establish links between Ukrainian scholars and museum professionals, with researchers from other countries, in their work on common topics.

The working language of the conference is English.

The application deadline is December 15, 2023.

Responses will be sent to the applicants by January 15, 2024.

The organizers will cover accommodations and meals for participants.

The registration form can be found at: https://bit.ly/UAJS_conference_2024_en.

For other questions, please contact the Organizing Committee at: conference@uajs.org.ua.