Jews, Muslims, and Modernity

Twenty-Second Annual Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Lecture

For the Public
Thursday, October 18, 2018
5:00 PM

Amado Recital Hall
Irvine Auditorium
3400 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

Contact:
Carrie Love

This year’s lecture pushes into less familiar regions of the modern Jewish experience, featuring one of the scholars who has pioneered the study of Jews in modern Islamic contexts, Aron Rodrigue, the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He will reflect on the state of the field from the perspective of his own research over the last three decades—and his remarks will be followed by brief responses from three other leading scholars in this area, Lital Levy (Princeton University); Julia Phillips Cohen (Vanderbilt University); and Jessica Marglin (University of Southern California) who will all broach new directions.

Featuring

Aron Rodrigue

Aron Rodrigue is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University.  He teaches courses in Modern Jewish History, the history and culture of Sephardic Jews, the Jews of Modern France, and the Ottoman Empire. His scholarship focuses on the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in modern times, and his writings are considered among the most influential in the field. Rodrigue earned his PhD at Harvard University, and has held fellowships at the American Academy of Jewish Research, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, among others. 

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Julia Phillips Cohen

Vanderbilt University

Julia Phillips Cohen is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Program in Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. She specializes in Jewish history, the history of the Ottoman Empire, urban history, intercommunal relations in the modern Mediterranean, Judeo-Spanish history, and Jews in Islamic lands. She is currently researching Sephardi Jews’ evolving relationship to Spain and their Spanish past in the centuries following the expulsion.

Cohen earned her PhD in History from Stanford University. She has held fellowships at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Jerusalem.

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Lital Levy

Princeton University

Lital Levy is an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. She teaches courses in Hebrew and Arabic literatures, world literature, and critical theory. Her research encompasses Hebrew, Arabic, and Anglophone literatures and cultures, with special interest in zones of contact between Arabic and Hebrew. 

Levy earned her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. She has taught at the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University and the Yiddish Book Center.

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Jessica Marglin

University of Southern California

Jessica Marglin is an associate professor of religion, Law, and history, as well as the Ruth Ziegler Early Career Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on the history of Jews and Muslims in North Africa and the Mediterranean, with a particular emphasis on law.

Marglin received her PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. She has previously held fellowships at Princeton University, Yeshiva University, the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, and the Institut d’Études Avancées in Paris.

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Cosponsors

Department of History, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Jewish Studies Program, Middle East Center