Doctoral scholarship: The Library of the Polish Haskalah

TOPIC: The topic of the doctoral dissertation is to cope with the library of the Polish Haskalah, broadly defined. The intended dissertation is to conduct the quantitative analysis of the writings of the Polish maskilim, preferably both the GIS spatial analysis and social network analysis as well as, possibly, elements of text mining or any sort of “distant reading” analytical practices. The successful dissertation should combine this quantitative approach with qualitative analysis. In addition it is expected the winning candidate will be able to combine this quantitative and qualitative analysis of the library of the Polish Haskalah with some comparative perspective on the Polish Enlightenment.

COMPETENCIES: It is expected the doctoral student will have a working command of Hebrew and Polish (and English, of course) in addition to the good knowledge of the Polish and Jewish history, East European Jewish history in modern times, as well as some knowledge on the Polish and Jewish (esp. Hebrew) literary traditions. In addition, it is expected the student will possess at least basic knowledge about quantitative tools of analysis, spatial analysis, social network analysis and their tools. A writing sample proving the candidate competencies in writing scholarly texts will be requested.

DUTIES: Besides writing his/her doctoral dissertation (in Polish or English) and attending classes assigned to the PhD program of the School of Letters, University of Wroclaw, the successful candidate will participate in gathering and processing quantitative data within the research project Two Enlightenments: Poles, Jews, and Their Roads to Modernity under supervision of the grant’s PI Marcin Wodziński.

STIPEND: The succesful candidate will receive a monthly stipend of 4,500 PLN gross for the duration of four years, starting in October 2020.

For further information contact: marcin.wodzinski@uwr.edu.pl

The EU funded project “Research Infrastructure on Religious Studies” (ReIReS) offers scholars from any academic discipline the opportunity to spend typically two weeks in one of fourteen outstanding European research centres (libraries and archives) in Mainz, Hamburg, Leuven, Paris, Bologna, and Sofia to carry out their research project in Historical Religious Studies and use the relevant collections for the history of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Ancient and non-European Religions.

 The call is open for Scholars, docs, postdocs, senior scholars, librarians and curators of special collections from Europe and from countries associated to Horizon2020.

ReIReS grants to users support for travel and accommodation. Grant holders spend usually two weeks at the provider institution with the constant tutorial of experts of the host provider who are specialists in the research field for which access has been requested, and who assist and guide the use and interpretation of the data.

Scholars throughout Europe are invited to apply for a transnational access scholarship to consult each of these special collections and libraries (excluding those belonging to the user country).

Applications are welcome before August 30, 2020.

For further information and the application form, see https://reires.eu/call-for-proposals-tasc-and-taad/

Jews and the Law
Year 1: Rethinking Premodern Jewish Legal Cultures

2021–2022 Fellowship Theme

APPLICATION DEADLINE: OCTOBER 12, 2020

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.

Successful topics, among others, might explore:

• Exchange between Jewish and non-Jewish legal genres, substance, and practice; the ubiquity of legal pluralisms in Jewish and ambient legal cultures.
• The relationship between halakhic texts and the social practice of law, as reflected in court documents and notarial records from disparate premodern Jewish communities.
• Evidence of negotiations between law, halakhic, and other sources of social and cultural authority (such as custom) in premodern Jewish societies.
• The theorization of sovereignty—by Jews and over Jews—in different periods and places.
• New approaches that illuminate Jewish intellectual history within and across premodern periods.
• The intersection between law and empire, and between race, religion, and territory, in a variety of Jewish contexts.
• The formation and authorization of legal experts across Jewish contexts, and their portrayal in the Jewish literary imagination.
• The deployment of Jewish law in broader cultural discourses.
• The benefits and limitations of different disciplinary approaches to these questions: history, anthropology, sociology, literature, etc.

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: https://katz.sas.upenn.edu/scholarly-programsinternational-fellowship/apply

Application deadline: October 12, 2020

Recommendations must be received by deadline: October 12, 2020
Fellowship recipients will be notified by March 1, 2021

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