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Transnational Migrations of Identity: Jews, Muslims and the Modernity Debate

This Conference will still go on as scheduled.

February 15-18, 2007conference poster
Convened by Professor Susannah Heschel

Judaism and Islam are religions with long histories of migrations and conquest, though very different traditions regarding ethnicity and diaspora. Public attention to the politically-fraught migrations of Muslims to Europe and the United States, and evaluations of the ultimate disaster of Jewish efforts at integration into Europe, suggest that a conference on both Jewish and Muslim experience would be worthwhile. Recently interest has grown on the part of scholars and journalists in migrations and their impact on Jewish and Muslim identities, as affected politically, culturally, religiously, and in terms of gender and sexuality. Both the rise of European anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the and the post-war rise of tensions over the Muslim presence in Europe and Turkey's membership in the European Union have raised questions about the nature of European nationalism and the modernity so proudly hailed for the past two hundred years. Contrasts between Europe and the United States have been drawn sharply over the question of Jews, Muslims and multiculturalism, yet efforts to uphold American society as a pinnacle of tolerance and as an environment in which difference is extolled and flourishes are being challenged by the Iraq war and by growing awareness of the economic and social consequences of globalization. Meanwhile, the shifts in defining Judaism and Islam as a result of the transnational migrations of the modern era have rarely been examined in comparative context, and only rarely have Judeophobia and Islamophobia been studied together. This conference will begin that comparative effort and intends to foster a discussion that will consider ways in which methodologies and interpretive frameworks might be shared as well as jointly called into question by the work of scholars in both Jewish and Islamic Studies.        

This conference is the fourth in a series funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation to Professor Susannah Heschel as part of an effort to foster closer relations between scholars in the fields of Islamic Studies and Jewish Studies. Previous conferences, held at Dartmouth over the course of the past two years, have addressed topics of "Gendered Intersections: Feminist Scholarship in Islamic and Judaic Studies," "Orientalism and Fundamentalism in Jewish and Islamic Critique: A Conference Honoring Sadik al-Azm," and "Ink and Blood: Textuality and the Human in Judaism, Christianity and Islam."        

This conference will convene scholars from Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and Canada, with an interest in Islamic and Jewish Studies and who work in a range of disciplines, including literature, anthropology, religion, linguistics, history, and political thought. 

All sessions are open to the public.

Conference Program (tentative)

Thursday, February 15, 2007
Opening Session: 4 PM-6 PM
Rockefeller 2

Moderator: Veronika Fuechtner, Department of German Studies, Dartmouth College

  • Sander Gilman, Emory University, Can the Experience of Diaspora Judaism serve as a Model for Islam in Today's Multicultural Europe?

Moderator: Gene Garthwaite, Department of History, Dartmouth College

  • Jamal Malik, University of Erfurt, Germany, Transnational Migrations of Sufism: Constructions of Muslims Identities in the West
Friday February 16, 2007
Session 1: 9 AM - 12 noon
Haldeman 125

Moderator: Michael Ermarth, Department of History, Dartmouth College

  • Moha Ennaji, Rutgers University, Moroccan Migrants in Europe: Facts and Identity Crisis
  • Tobias Brinkmann, Southampton University, England, Eastern Jews and Western Jews: The Transitory Spaces of Migration before and after the "Great War" - Berlin, London and New York
  • Kecia Ali, Boston University, Shariah-Mindedness in North American Islam: Women, Authority, and Authenticity

 

Session 2: Friday 2 PM - 5 PM
Haldeman 125

Moderator: Ed Miller, Department of History, Dartmouth College

  • Till van Rahden, Université de Montréal, "'Germans of the Jewish Tribe': Visions of Community between Nationalism and Particularism, 1800 to 1933"
  • Matti Bunzl, University of Illinois, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe
  • Mona Abaza, NIAS and American University in Cairo, The Trafficking with Enlightenment in Egypt
Saturday February 17, 2007
Session 3: 9 AM - 12 noon
Haldeman 125

Moderator:  Gene Garthwaite, Department of History, Dartmouth College

  • Leo Spitzer, Columbia University, A Name Given, A Name Taken: Camouflaging, Resistance, and Diasporic Social Identity
  • Fatima Sadiqi, University of Fez and Harvard University, The Impact of Islamicization on Moroccan Feminisms
  • Admiel Kosman, University of Potsdam and Geiger College, Germany, Do we all believe in the same God? Law versus Religiosity, Structure versus Heart
Session 4: Saturday 2 PM-5 PM
Haldeman 125

Moderator: Amy Allen, Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College

  • David Powers, Cornell University, "Fathers and Sons: the Foundation Myths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
  • Naomi Seidman, Graduate Theological Union and University of California, Berkeley, The Erotics of Tradition in a Post-Secular Age
  • Mary Jean Green, Dartmouth College, People Who Leave No Trace:  Writing Jewish and Muslim Immigrant Memory in France

 

Co-Sponsors Include: Office of the Provost, The Fannie and Alan Leslie Center for the Humanities, German Studies Department, The William P. and Dewilda N. Harris German/Dartmouth Distinguished Visiting Professorship, The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Jewish Studies Program

Last Updated: 11/12/08