Sarah
Frances
Levin

Berkeley
University of California
Ruth Meltzer Fellowship

Research Topic

Moroccan Jewish-Muslim Relations Remembered through Berber Oral Traditions

Bio

Sarah Frances Levin researches the Jewish communities of North Africa and the Middle East, and particularly the intertextual dialogue and debate between Jews and Muslims. She sees folklore as a unique framework for addressing issues of boundaries and difference between these groups and uses this approach in her study of 20th-century Jewish-Muslim relations.

Levin recently received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley with a dissertation titled “Narrative Remembrance: Close Encounters between Muslims and Jews in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains.”

Selected publications

  • “Wit, Ruse, Rivalry, and Other Keys to Coexistence: Reflections of Jewish-Muslim Relations in Berber Oral Traditions” in North African Mosaic: A Cultural Reappraisal of Ethnic and Religious Minorities, ed. N. Boudraa and J. Krause (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007)

Fellowship

2018–2019

Delving into the meaning of modernity beyond the European, American, and Israeli contexts, looking instead to North Africa, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and Central and South Asia.