EAJS Virtual 2024: Jewish Literatures, Places, and Heritage (Online Conference)
21 November 2024
Link for Finalised Programme: EAJS Virtual Programme (Final)
In summary, there were 2 keynote speakers and 12 panel sessions with 3 or 4 speakers in each:
Keynotes:
- Ruth Ellen Gruber: Engaging the Real-Imaginary: Shtetl Dreams and Shtetl Days
- Massimo Giuliani: Jerusalem and the hundreds ‘small Jerusalems’ of the Diaspora
Panels Sessions:
- Heritage:
- Unexpected Forms of Heritage
- Belarusian Jewry: Spatial and Historical Measures
- Jewish Heritage in Wales: Future Directions
- Geographies:
- Forgotten Landscapes, New Places, and Identity
- Spacial Imagination in Second Temple Apocalypticism
- Places and Texts in Chabad: Past and Present
- Literature and Literary Places:
- Building around the Void in Contemporary Hebrew and Jewish Literature
- Nostalgic and Utopic Places in European Jewish Literature
- Reconceptualising the Places, Spaces, and Historical Entanglements of Jewish American Literature
- New Readings and Rediscovery of Urban Topographies:
- The Afterlife of the Shtetl
- Intersecting Spaces, Places, and Literature
- In Search of Jewish Urban Topographies
Jewish literature, heritage sites, and cultural landmarks form intricate topographical networks across urban and rural landscapes. Since the mid-1990s, the promotion of Jewish heritage—synagogues, museums, ghetto areas, and Shoah memorials—has significantly shaped the economic and cultural landscapes of European cities. Alongside these developments, there has been a growing interest in sites linked to Jewish literary creativity, fostering new forms of cultural pilgrimage. Places associated with Jewish authors and the settings in their works have become focal points in travel experiences, highlighting the rich interplay between literature and physical space.
This virtual conference explored multiple dimensions of Jewish Literatures, Places, and Heritage, from macro-level analyses of trans-regional Jewish networks to micro-level studies of specific locations such as Jewish residential areas. Jewish topographies, tourism phenomena, and policies were also examined to understand their role in shaping Jewish literary memory and heritage. The conference aimed to open dialogue on both symbolic and physical spaces—religious, historical, and literary—and how these have been represented, studied, and conveyed through time, as well as their current and future developments.
The event featured a keynote by Ruth Ellen Gruber and brought together a range of perspectives on religious and secular spaces, exploring synchronous and diachronic approaches. Panels delved into unexpected forms of heritage, historical entanglements of spaces and places in Jewish American Literature, and into the nostalgic and utopic places in European Jewish Literature. By drawing on literary, cultural, and historical insights, this conference provided a platform for scholars to collaborate, develop innovative research, and generate new approaches to understanding the interconnections between Jewish literature, places, and heritage.