The Future of Antisemitism Research
Zoom Webinar
In this Zoom panel discussion, field leaders will report back from a major international conference on new directions and challenges in research and pedagogy about antisemitism, in response to new needs created by a rapidly changing academic and political environment.
Antisemitism was by no means a neglected topic in Jewish studies prior to October 7, 2023, but in its aftermath, scholars and centers of antisemitism studies found themselves in a completely different and very difficult environment. How to define antisemitism was no longer merely a question debated within scholarly circles: it was now driving conflict both within the university community and in the larger societies of which they are part. Public claims about the state of antisemitism weren't being vetted or properly questioned. A field that had been largely focused on history was now being asked to address a contemporary phenomenon, requiring new kinds of expertise, and new positions and centers were established that will shape the field for decades to come.
This all happened very rapidly, and in response, four major centers and their leaders are joining forces to host a conference for over forty scholars from North America, Israel, Europe, and South Africa over two days in January. Attendees will discuss the current state of the field of antisemitism studies, compare notes, learn about new legal issues, and consider a new research agenda. The idea is to bring together center directors and leading experts from around the world for a candid and open-ended conversation about the challenges facing the field of antisemitism research today, future directions for the field, and ways to work more closely together.
Following the conference, in our Zoom program, the leaders of the four organizing institutions—NYU’s newly established center for antisemitism studies, the newly established Raoul Wallenberg Institute at the University of Michigan, the Anne Tannenbaum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto, and the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at Penn, the latter acting on an initiative to promote better understanding of antisemitism made possible by the Goldhirsh-Yellin Foundation—will offer takeaways and answer audience questions.
Featuring
Anna Shternshis
University of Toronto
Anna Shternshis is the Al and Malka Green Professor in Yiddish Studies and director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Indiana UP, 2006) and When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life under Stalin (Oxford UP, 2017), and most recently co-author (together with Oleg Budnitsky, David Engel, and Gennady Estraikh) of Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: War, Conquest, and Catastrophe, 1939–1945 (New York UP, 2022). Together with artist Psoy Korolenko, Shternshis created and directed the Grammy-nominated Yiddish Glory project, an initiative that brought back to life forgotten Yiddish music written during the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. A recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, she is currently working on a book about Yiddish music created in Nazi-occupied Ukraine tentatively titled Last Yiddish Heroes: A Lost and Found Archive of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union.
Steven Weitzman
University of Pennsylvania
Steven Weitzman is the Ella Darivoff Director at the Katz Center and Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages & Literatures at Penn.
Avinoam Patt
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Avinoam Patt is the Maurice Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies at New York University where he also serves as Director of the Center for the Study of Antisemitism. He is the author of multiple books on Jewish responses to the Holocaust, including Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (2009), The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw: The Afterlife of the Revolt (2021) and, with Laura Hilton, Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust (2020). His newest book, Israel and the Holocaust, was published by Bloomsbury Press as part of its Perspectives on the Holocaust series in 2024.
Jeffrey Veidlinger
University of Toronto
Jeffrey Veidlinger is Director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute at the University of Michigan and Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies. His latest book, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918–1921 in Ukraine and the Onset of the Holocaust, won a Canadian Jewish Literary Award and a Vine Book Award, and was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Wingate Literary Prize. He is also the author of the award-winning books In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Small-Town Jewish Life in Soviet Ukraine, The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage, and Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire.