Fellowship Opportunity

Application Deadline: October 12, 2020

Jews and the Law: Rethinking Premodern Jewish Legal Cultures

2021–2022 academic year

The Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania is pleased to open a call for applications for the first of two successive fellowship years devoted to Jews and the law:

Jews have been closely associated with law since antiquity, developing a rich and complex legal tradition and participating variously in the legal cultures of the societies in which they have lived. Several leading universities are now home to centers for Jewish law, ancient to contemporary in focus, and the topic is drawing scholarly interest from well beyond the field of legal studies, including research in history, literature, philosophy, political theory, and gender studies, among others. The Katz Center is pleased to contribute to this growing and expansive topic over the course of two consecutive fellowship years devoted to exploring the connections between Jewish studies and legal thought, culture, and practice.

During the first year of this cycle, the 2021–22 academic year, the Center seeks to support scholars working on law as a dynamic feature of Jewish culture in premodern contexts, spanning from antiquity to the eighteenth century.

The Katz Center invites applications that propose the study or framing of Jewish law or legal thinking within relevant historical contexts; that explore the relationship between law and other aspects of society or culture; that attend to questions of form, genre, and rhetoric; that investigate the institutions, practices, and actors that enact law; or that address related topics such as governance and/or crime. The vision for the year is of a fellowship community that advances an interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional approach to law and that bridges between Jewish law and other legal cultures.

The Katz Center will issue a separate call for applications in the summer of 2021 for the year 2022–23, focused on Jews and the law in modern contexts. While the hope is to promote interaction between the two years, the two fellowship cohorts will be distinct: there will be a separate selection process for each year, and fellows selected for the first year will not be eligible to reapply for the second.

Applications from scholars worldwide are encouraged. All applicants must hold a doctoral degree or expect to receive it by the start date of the fellowship. Fellows will be expected to take residence in Philadelphia, and to contribute to the Center’s intellectual community through active participation in seminars, conferences, and other collaborative activities.

For more information about the Katz Center’s fellowship program, including a full description of the year’s theme, examples of possible projects, eligibility, and requirements, please visit us online: katz.sas.upenn.edu