EAJS Conference Grant Program in Jewish Studies
Report
„To be (dis)continued. New Perspectives on the Entanglements of Gender, Sexualities, and Jewishness”
Organizers:
Research Group Gender/Queer and Jewish Studies (Selma-Stern-Center for Jewish Studies Berlin- Brandenburg):
- Janin Afken, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- Dr. Katja Baumgärtner, associated with the Selma-Stern-Center for Jewish Studies Berlin- Brandenburg
- David Gasparjan, Freie Universität Berlin
- Liesa Hellmann, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- Dr. Elisabeth Janik-Freis, Technical University of Berlin Jan Wilkens, University of Potsdam
in cooperation with the Association for Jewish Studies in Germany (Vereinigung für Jüdische Studien)
Event rationale
The workshop ‘To be (dis)continued.’ New Perspectives on the Entanglements of Gender, Sexualities, and Jewishness featured a multi-layered and interdisciplinary analysis of the entanglements of gender, sexuality(ies) and Jewishness. The intersectionality of the categories class, ethnicity, race, age, generation, space, (dis)ability, etc. was constantly taken into account. From a historical perspective, it can be seen how these categories are related to the phenomena of antisemitism, heterosexism, transphobia, and misogyny, which are re-emerging worldwide. Investigating and reflecting heteronormative and queer as well as Jewish and non-Jewish historical and contemporary constructions of identities, self-conceptions, and ascriptions of self and other can offer new research impulses that the conference sought to explore. Intersectional analyses of marginalised positions are closely linked to questions of representation and visibility.
The papers presented at the conference pondered a broad range of questions. Meta questions that each presenter was more or less concerned with comprise the following:
How can Jewish studies benefit from gendered and/or queer perspectives and vice versa? How can we address the complexities of the intertwining of Gender, Sexualities, and Jewishness? What, for example, is and was the relation between Jewishness and Queerness? Which narratives are (not) told, and why? How were Jewish bodies constructed between the poles of objectification and self-empowerment? Which new forms of belonging, exclusion, and community formation were established?
Moreover, each panel addressed a variety of topical questions that connected the overarching themes with the individual research projects. There was the question of authorship: Who can raise their voice, whose voice is heard? What were the historical and what are current dynamics especially non-male authorship is subject to? What forms of self-representation were developed and how do they connect with colonial, gendered and other cultural, social and political discourses?
There was the question of bodies: How do practice and performance construct Jewish bodies? What kind of body politics are at play? What embodied experiences are brought forward by Jewish women and queer people? There was the question of networks and communities: How do contemporary Jewish communities view and express gender in regard with secularity or religiosity? How is kinship constructed that is not based upon familial bonds but upon a shared gender, sexuality, or religion?
There was the question of remembering: How does gender matter in new forms of commemorating and narrating the Shoah, genocide and prosecution? How do notions of the past shape representations and self-perceptions of today?
And there was the question of methodology: How do we approach new, immersive media? How can queer theory help us understand diasporic experience and trauma? What perspectives are offered through a feminist lens? How do Jewish historiography and, Jewish Studies in general, benefit from queer perspectives?
Research in this field is often carried out by researchers at the beginning of their academic career and in the context of qualifying theses (dissertations, post-doctoral theses). Notably, in German-speaking countries, but not exclusively, there are no institutionalized hubs with this focus. Dialogue and critical exchange are, however, cornerstones of research and elementary for academic training.
Our early-career researchers’ workshop was to be a platform where young researchers from different disciplines and countries were able to enter into a dialogue with each other and with the invited mentors. It was a catalyst, not only for the further development of the participants’ projects but also for interdisciplinary networking. The conference allowed emerging researchers to present their theses, methodological approaches, and initial research results for discussion and, in exchange with others, to sharpen their arguments and expand their knowledge. The workshop also addressed difficulties in research and innovative methodological approaches. Thereby, the conference offered the participants to establish a network which not only counteracts disciplinary isolation but also contributes to individual academic careers.
We had invited professors from different disciplines to the conference who acted as mentors for two to three speakers each. In addition to providing valuable feedback for the mentees on their projects and methods, the professors discussed career opportunities and networking strategies. Hence, all participants had the opportunity to connect with well-established researchers and benefited from their many years of experience in the research field.
Sections and Papers
A total of 16 early career research presented their work in five panels. The workshop started with the Panel I: Writing and Authorship. Prof. Dr. Ulrike Vedder (Humboldt Universität Berlin) acted as the mentor for the panelists. Jakub Zygmunt (University of Warsaw) discussed questions of Jewish authorship with the paper The Question of Authorship in the History of a Poem by Celia Dropkin – Если он приедет в мой город [If He Arrives in My City]. Based on Dropkin’s egodocuments, Zygmunt showed how the poet had to prove that she was the author of the poem, after it was without her knowledge and consent appropriated by Hebrew-language writer Uri-Nissan Gnessin. Janin Afken and Liesa Hellmann (both Humboldt-Universität Berlin) considered Jewish Authorship in Magazines of the Early Homosexual Movement. The first homosexual emancipation movement (1890–1933) in Germany was profoundly shaped and promoted by Jewish activists, writers, doctors, and artists yet in the movement’s vibrant magazine culture Jewish authors and direct references to Jewishness in general are conspicuously rare. Both presentations asked how the intersectional category Jewishness can be conceptualized for the literary concept of authorship and how to trace Jewish topics in literature when they often remain in the shadow.
Panel II: Jewish Women’s Biographies (Revisited) reevaluated the lives and accomplishments of Jewish women. Laura Seithümmer (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf) presented her work on Court Jew Esther Liebmann (ca. 1646–1714). Despite her less than glamorous end, when she lost almost her entire fortune to king Frederick Wilhelm I., in order to pay off her alleged debts, the Esther Liebmann made a decisive mark on the Jewish community in Berlin during her lifetime and must be regarded today as one of the most powerful women of her time. Emily Eckles spoke about her work on Jewish lesbian and queer networks during the Holocaust. Her research explored how queer Jews assisted others due to a sense of constructed kinship based upon a shared gender, sexuality, or religion. Based on the life stories of queer Jews like Felice Schragenheim, Annette Eick, and Frieda Belinfante Eckles outlined some of the roles that queer Jewish women operated within during the Holocaust. PD Dr. Anna-Dorothea Ludewig (University of Potsdam) was the panel’s mentor. Both presentations faced the question of how historiographic biographical research can be done when sources are scarce or contested.
During the next panel, Panel III: Media, Visual Culture and Performance, the participants engaged with questions of visuality. Prof. Dr. Tanja Thomas (University of Tübingen) supported the panelists as their mentor. Cécile J. Esther Guigui (Queen Mary University of London) presented parts of their Ph. D. project Constructing Jewishness in Colonial Algeria: Women and Photography, 1885-1940. Contrasting colonial portrayals from the late 19th with portraits of Algerian Jewish women from private collections from the late 19th century until the end of the 1930s Guigui considered how self-representation formed a contrast with colonial construction of Jewish identity and how elements of Jewishness were made visible or invisible in each of these representations. Lukas Bengough (Tel Aviv University/Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg) and Jackie Davis (University of California, Los Angeles) impressed with a joint presentation on Choreographic Analysis of German/Jewish dancers Valeska Gert and Lea Bergstein. Imbricating Gender Studies, Dance Studies, and Jewish History, in our presentation they looked at the types of social relations produced through these artists’ dance works, exploring the novel community structures they created through their movement forms. Both presentations circled around the question what forms of self- representation and self-designation were employed to represent as a female Jewish body in different media (photography; dance).
Panel IV: Lives in the Interwar Period, chaired by Prof. Dr. Andreas Kraß (Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin), focused on Gender related questions in Jewish Studies. Franzi Finkenstein (Washington University St. Louis) considered the life of Charlotte Salomon in her paper Feminist lenses and ‘queer’ as an analytical perspective to approach life narratives by Charlotte Salomon. Finkenstein discussed the generative and reparative use of queer orientations and a feminist disability studies lens towards German-Jewish women artists as ‘deviant’ and ‘disabled’ that intersects with questions about trauma and temporality, spatiality, gender, and Jewishness. Dr. Elisabeth Janik-Freis (Technical University of Berlin) presented results of her post-doc project in their paper Between the Sexes – Policing Prostitution in Germany and Poland in the Interwar Period. Janik-Freis explored how the gender of women police units was conceptualized in politics, by national and international experts in criminology, by the public and the press, and by the members of the units themselves. A key question of the discussion following both presentations was how queer theory can be developed into queer methods for historiographic analyses.
The second day of the workshop was concluded by Panel V: Jewish Spaces, hosted and mentored by Prof. Dr. Elisa Klapheck (University of Paderborn). Two papers approached the mikveh as space for Jewish women from a historical and a modern perspective. Anna Berezowska (University of Wrocław) and their paper The Mikveh as a Women’s Ritual space in Jewish Literature, Tradition and Architecture – the context of gender methodology focused on the experience of Polish and Ukrainian women in the mikveh from 1870-1939 and examined how the mikveh space and the rituals associated with it looked and changed, and how it shaped women’s religious and social experience. Varvara Redmond (University of Warsaw) presented their findings on how cis and trans* Jews experience the mikveh today and how they reinterpret the experience the mikveh in light of queer feminism (Mediated Narratives about Niddah and Mikveh). In the same panel, David Gasparjan (Freie Universität Berlin) spoke about gender narratives in his historiographic work on “Wo kann es ein größeres Erlebnis geben? Wer von uns möchte da fehlen?” – The First International Sports Event of the Jewish National Movement in Tel Aviv in 1932. The celebration of the first international sports event by the Maccabi World Union points to questions about the implementation of new system of social and gender relations, and the role of political agendas.
The third day was opened by a final panel of presentations. Due to a short-noticed cancellation, Panel VI: Jewish Activism was not attended by a mentor. Despite many inquiries, unfortunately, it was not possible to find a professor who could replace the intended mentor. Thilo Rother (University of Bayreuth) presented their research on the Humanistic Judaism in New York – An investigation of their queer feminist claim. They added first considerations about the upcoming Ph. D. project which will deal with non-religious Jewish life in Germany and include queer Jewish perspectives. Jan Wilkens (University of Potsdam) closed the panel with their paper Writing Queer Jewish History – Methodological Questions on Queering Jewish Historiography and deliberated how queer methodologies can transform Jewish Studies as a whole.
The workshop was concluded by a Laboratory on Rethinking Gender/Queer and Jewish Studies. The participants expressed what they perceived as key questions and overarching topics. In a lively discussion, common experiences in research were shared as well as ideas were brought forward on how the new network can be sustained and developed.
Most Significant and Productive Threads
The participants of the workshop vividly discussed different questions regarding the sources used for their research. Often, the researcher has to work with heteronormative material: be it cis men writing about cis women and trans* people or heterosexual people writing about queers. The participants emphasized the importance to recognize this circumstance and carefully evaluate the intent of the sources and read between the lines to represent their queer objects appropriately.
A relating aspect that was brought up on all three workshop days was the methodological question of how to develop an analysis of cultural, historical, political and social systems and mechanisms of power (relations) based on individual case studies. What can be learned from individual cases, what is threatened to be left out or overlooked?
Another thread of the workshop was the importance of intersectional approaches. Even though Jews most always have intersectional identities, this fact is often not represented in research. All of our projects benefit from intersectional methodology which enables us to more fully understand the lives of Jewish cis women, queers, and trans* people. The participants also reflected on the problem that some concepts that have been established in the respective subject cultures are based on heteronormative presuppositions that can collide with one’s own, especially queer theory- informed research projects.
The interdisciplinary nature of the workshop was a great advantage in this respect. On the one hand, it became clear that the participants were confronted with similar methodological and theoretical challenges across disciplines. On the other hand, the different disciplinary approaches made it possible to reflect on one’s own methodology based on the methodological approaches of others. This transfer of knowledge was perceived as very profitable.
Outcomes
The workshop was a highly productive event, especially for networking between the participants. The participants exchanged ideas on how to carry on the impetus they received from the workshop. One idea was that the research group Gender/Queer and Jewish Studies should hold its meetings in a more open format so that other researchers can join. Additionally, the group might organize more public lectures (via zoom) and workshops. This should not only facilitate the exchange between the participants of this workshop but should also create opportunities for other interested researchers – especially those who are about to enter the academic world with Ph. D. projects. The organizing group plans to establish a mailing list as a first step to facilitate the involvement of a larger group of early career researchers. A publication in context of the workshop was not regarded appropriate since the projects presented during the workshop are still work in progress and the workshop especially encouraged the participants to think outside the academic conventions and the freedom to just associate.
The involvement of mentors in the workshop was an asset. Through the responses of the professors, among other things, it was possible to keep meta-levels in view from early on during the panel discussions. The first and second day of the workshop ended with a two/three-on-one-session in which the participants could enter into a deeper conversation with their mentors, for example, to discuss questions that would have gone beyond the scope of the group discussion. In several accounts the mentors encouraged the mentees to keep in touch with them and offered further guidance beyond the scope of the workshop.