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Winners of the Best Jewish Studies Project Contest

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The committee for the Best Jewish Studies Projects Awards has chosen two winners for the Best Jewish Studies Award: one in the creative category and one in the academic category. For the best creative project, the winner is Shayna Dollinger’s Abayudaya Radio Show. In this remarkable radio podcast, Shayna explores the Abayudaya, the unknown Jewish community in Uganda. The podcast moves elegantly and smoothly between Shayna serving as a journalist and the community’s rabbi whom she interviews. While exploring the subject, Shayna does not shy away from confronting controversial questions about the difficulties of Aliya (immigration to Israel) that members of the community face in light of the unfair and possibly racist attitude of the Israeli religious authorities and the establishment. For the best academic paper, the winner is Noah Kline’s paper on Memory in the Spotlight. Relaying on interviews with Spiegelman and other sources, Kline offers a fascinating analysis of Art Spiegelman canonical comic Maus that expands into existential and philosophical questions regarding truth and memory. While the issue of preserving the private Holocaust experiences of Spiegelman’s father from Auschwitz through graphic narration is brought to light by Kline in a thorough way, he explores  deeper questions: What is memory and does it represent the truth? How can we describe the reality of one person’s experience and translate it into a work of art? Is it possible to create a meaning out of someone else memories? Kline did a great job in this piece by articulating his philosophical questions while providing answers and suggestions for answers leaning on the multilayered complex work of Spiegelman.

 

Roots & Routes: Conversations on Displacement and Belongin

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Tune into WESU 88.1FM Middletown every Monday starting Feb. 24, 1:30pm for Roots & Routes: Conversations on Displacement and Belonging. You can listen to previous episodes and learn more about it here.

Roots and Routes is a radio show bringing stories of exile, homeland, and belonging from all over the world, from Bangladesh to Bosnia, from NYC to Istanbul. The show is researched, produced, and presented by students of the Yaniv Feller’s course “RELI213\CJST214 Refugees & Exiles: Religion in the Diaspora” with support from the Allbritton Center’s Office for Service Learning.

The Center for Jewish Studies at the Association for Jewish Studies Conference

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The Center for Jewish Studies actively participated at the 51st Annual Association for Jewish studies Conference in San Diego. For the second year in a row, the Center for Jewish Studies sponsored the AJS Film Festival. In addition, Dalit Katz, the center’s director, introduced the opening film of the festival, Tel Aviv on Fire. Shayna Dollinger, a candidate for the Certificate in Jewish and Israel Studies, and Sophia Shoulson, a Wesleyan graduate, also attended the conference. Michelle Katz, an alumni of the Center for Jewish Studies, is the AJS Membership and Content Conference Manager.

Professor Katz Published an Article on the Association for Jewish Studies Film Committee Work

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Dalit Katz, the Chair of the Film Committee of the Association for Jewish Studies, published an article entitled “From Cairo to the Cloud to Tel Aviv on Fire: News from the AJS Film Committee, Fall 2019” at the AJS News: The Conference Issue . The article details the film committee’s work: organizing a film festival at the AJS conference, arranging for speakers and Q/A sessions with film directors, and initiating and chairing an annual pedagogical session on “Teaching with Films,” with a different theme each year. The annual AJS conference is scheduled for December 16-18, 2019, and will take place at Hilton San Diego Bayfront. The Association for Jewish Studies is the largest learned society and professional organization whose mission is “to advance research and teaching in Jewish Studies at colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher learning, and to foster greater understanding of Jewish Studies scholarship among the wider public”.

For more information about the article, please check the following link:

https://www.associationforjewishstudies.org/publications-research/ajs-news/2019-news-from-the-ajs-film-committee/

Prof. Dollinger speaks on Black Power, Jewish Politics

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Professor Marc Dollinger, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University  and a  Wesleyan parent, delivered an interactive multi- media presentation about Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s. Earlier  that day Professor Dollinger met with students in the Center for Jewish Studies and the Center for African- American Studies for a lunch in which he shared  the circumstances which prompted him to write this book.  This presentation was part of the Annual Jeremy Zwelling lecture instituted to honor Jeremy Zwelling, the founder of Jewish Studies at Wesleyan University. We had a full house in attendance, and hope to plan more events with the Center for African -American Studies. The lecture was sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies.

Contemporary Israeli Voices, 2019 Features Two Outstanding Female Writers: Shalev and Rabinyan

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In the fall, the Center for Jewish Studies hosted Dorit Rabinyan and Zeruya Shalev as part of the series Contemporary Israeli Voices. Dorit Rabinyan delivered a talk about her recent book All the Rivers, a love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, which was banned by Israel’s Ministry of Education from being taught at high schools. Zeruya Shalev delved into the return of pain and the haunting of the past in her recent novel Pain. Both writers met Hebrew classes and answered the students’ questions in Hebrew. A book sale and reception followed each presentation. Students in Jewish Studies and Hebrew Studies wrote papers reflecting on those presentations. We look forward to hosting those accomplished writers again in the future. The series Contemporary Israeli Voices was initiated and organized by Dalit Katz the Director for the Center for Jewish Studies and is sponsored by the Center for Jewish studies.

 

Dalit Katz served as a juror at the Lighthouse International Film Festival

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Dalit Katz, Director of the Center for Jewish Studies,  served as a juror in the documentary category at the Lighthouse International Film Festival at Long Beach Island in New Jersey. The opening night film was the feature film Skin, directed by the Israeli film maker Guy Nativ who won the Oscar for a short by the same title. After the screening Guy Nativ conducted a Q/A session with the audience. The film festival’s executive director this year is Amir Bogen, the Scholar in Residence at the Center for Jewish Studies in spring 2019.

Professor Kleinberg received Distinguished Professorship

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Ethan Kleinberg, Professor of History and Professor of Letters, received the Class of 1958 Distinguished Professorship, established in 2008.

Ethan Kleinberg joined the Department of History and the College of Letters in 2001 after completing his B.A. at University of California, Berkeley, a Fulbright scholarship in France, and his M.A. and Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include European intellectual history, critical theory, educational structures, and the philosophy of history. Kleinberg has published three books, most recently Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past (Stanford University Press, 2017). In 2018, he was Professeur Invité at Université Bordeaux Montaigne, and in Summer 2020 he will be the Reinhart Koselleck Guest Professor at Bielefeld University’s Zentrum für Theorien in der historischen Forschung.

Prof. Feller’s new course incorporates Radio Discussion in the Diaspora

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The Center for Jewish Studies continues to offer new and innovative courses. Last spring, Yaniv Feller, Assistant Professor of Religion and the Jeremy Zwelling Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies, taught a new student-centered course in which students produced radio discussions podcasts  about Religion in the Diaspora. Check out the post below, written by Noa Street-Sachs

Beyond the Classroom: Student-led Radio Discussions on Religion in the Diaspora

Announcing the Best Student Paper in Jewish Studies, 2019

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On behalf of the Center for Jewish Studies, I am delighted to announce that a committee consisting of Jewish Studies faculty members has chosen Sivan Basha Piatigorsky-Roth’s paper “Need More Love: On Unlikable Self-Representation in The Jewish American Female Autobiographical Comics of Aline Kominsky-Crumb” as the winner of the Best Student Paper in Jewish Studies Award. Members of the committee were impressed by  the “nuanced reading of a complex, sensitive, timely matter”.

The award will be presented to Sivan at the Annual Samuel and Dorothy Frankel Memorial lecture on Thursday, April 11 at 8pm at Daniels Family Commons. At that time, a lecture entitled “The Rise and Fall of Salonica, the Jerusalem of the Balkans” will be presented by Professor Devin Naar, the Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington.