The Humanities and Social Sciences Fund Conference on Imagining the Renaissance / Defining the Jews
“Ours is a global frame,” as Natalie Zemon Davis has written. Nowadays, “more continents, peoples, ideas, and religions count than perhaps ever before.” Within this global frame, historians are trying to deal with difference in narratives of boundaries that remain fuzzy and porous. Our conference seeks to contribute to this discussion on the “forms of cultural mixture, metissage, and exchange” as it was expressed within the context of Renaissance Italy.
In four intense days of scholarly presentations, our speakers will address the blurred borders between the discourses of hegemonic groups and those of minorities, and where the narratives of sharp opposition between Jews, Christians and Muslims are challenged and shown to be “fuzzy and porous” rather than simply enforced, legislated and consolidated by social limitations. This conference wishes to show how traditionally accepted concepts such as Jewishness, ghettoes, conversions, and religious identity, were never as solid and unchanging as claimed by modern historians of the Renaissance, who looked to canonize oppositional definitions by writing “about belief systems that claim one or another kind of group superiority.” Our objective will thus be to foreground the increasing complexity in the definition of the “I” and the “other” in the period. As the named “other” responded and reacted to the majority in entangled moments and loci of cultural self-realization, there was also a process of mutual (self-)fashioning. It is the goal of our conference to explore that process within an interdisciplinary discussion focused on Renaissance Italian Jewry and against the background of Mediterranean cultural mobility and of broader global dynamics and interactions.
Questo convegno si muove in una prospettiva globale, partendo dal presupposto che – come ha scritto la grande storica Natalie Zemon Davis – al giorno d’oggi «sempre più continenti, popoli, idee e religioni hanno raggiunto una visibilità finora mai perseguita». All’interno di questa cornice globale, gli storici sempre più tentano di confrontarsi con rappresentazioni dei confini tra queste entità che assumono la fisionomia di realtà miste e porose. Il convegno “Imagining the Renaissance / Defining the Jews” tenta di contribuire a questa discussione sulle «forme di mescolanza culturale, metissage, e scambio» per come si espressero nell’ambito del lungo Rinascimento italiano. L’obiettivo principale è lavorare sui labili confini tra i discorsi dei gruppi egemonici e quelli delle minoranze, e di mostrare come le narrative tradizionali di una opposizione netta tra ebrei, cristiani e musulmani furono nella realtà molto più sfumati e porosi di quanto non lascino presupporre le analisi che si concentrano troppo letteralmente su come le norme prefissate erano applicate, prodotte e consolidate tramite la separazione sociale. Gli studiosi che parteciperanno sono stati invitati a ridiscutere concetti in apparenza consolidati come «Jewishness», ghetto, conversioni, ed identità religiose, mostrando come esser non furono mai così solide e immutabili. Di conseguenza, anche il rapporto tra il «noi» e il «loro» nella prima età moderna verrà ridiscusso, illuminandone tutta la complessità. Il caso qui studiato, in ottica interdisciplinare, mostrerà come la costruzione storica dell’«alterità» sia intimamente legata a quella, altrettanto importante ed interrelata, dell’auto-identificazione. La storia ebrei nell’Italia del Rinascimento potrà essere in tal modo letta sullo sfondo della mobilità culturale del Mediterraneo e delle più ampie dinamiche e interazioni globali.
כנס זה הינו השלישי מתוך סדרה של שלושה אירועים בין-לאומיים שהתקיימו ברומא, במארילנד שבארה”ב, ועכשיו בירושלים. כוונת המארגנים היא להתייחס ולתרום לשיח המחקרי העכשווי על הקישוריות גלובלית בין אוכלוסיות ותרבויות שונות, ולהראות עד כמה הזהויות המקומיות והדתיות דאז לא היו כה מוחלטות כפי שהן נראות בעיני המתבונן המודרני, אלא נוזליות וגמישות. בעזרתם של כמה מהחוקרים המובילים בתחום ההיסטוריה התרבותית והכלכלית, אירוע זה יבקש לשפוך אור נוסף על המפגשים בין קבוצות הגמוניות ומיעוטים באגם הים התיכון, עם דגש על איטליה – הדוברים יבקשו להתייחס למושגים כגון “יהדות”, זהות יהודית, גטו, מומרים וזהויות דתיות, מתוך ניסיון לפתוח דיונים אודות המגעים התרבותיים והמפגשים בין ה”אני” וה”אתה” מתוך נקודת מבט גלובלי.
Keynote Speakers will be:
Nicholas Terpstra (University of Toronto)
Filippo de Vivo (Birkbeck – University of London)
Tamar Herzog (Harvard University)
Speakers:
• Yaakov Mascetti (Bar-Ilan University)
• Serena Di Nepi (Sapienza University of Rome)
• Nicholas Terpstra (University of Toronto)
• Stefano Villani (University of Maryland)
• Bernard Cooperman (University of Maryland)
• Filippo de Vivo (Birkbeck – University of London)
• Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
• Tamar Herzig (Tel Aviv University)
• Philip M. Soergel (University of Maryland)
• David Malkiel (Bar-Ilan University) David.Malkiel@biu.ac.il
• Emily Michelson (University of St Andrews) till Thurs
• Michael Sherberg (Washington University in St. Louis)
• Yaacov Deutsch (The David Yellin College of Education)
• Bruce Gordon (Yale University)
• Martin Rothkegel (Elstal Theological Seminary)
• Federico Zuliani (University of Turin)
• Alessandra Veronese (University of Pisa)
• Giuseppe Veltri, (University of Hamburg) till Tues
• Fabrizio Lelli, (University of Salento) ?
• Edoardo Angione (Roma Tre University)
• Tamar Herzog (Harvard University)
• Katherine Aron-Beller (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
• Martina Mampieri (Lichtenberg-Kolleg – The Göttingen Institute for Advanced Study – University of Göttingen) ?
• Germano Maifreda (University of Milan)
• Guido Bartolucci (University of Calabria)
• Margherita Mantovani (Sapienza University of Rome)
• Eric Lawee (Bar-Ilan University)
• Emma Abate (CNRS – French National Center for Scientific Research)
• J. H. Yossi Chajes (University of Haifa)
• Adam Shear (University of Pittsburgh)
• Lynn Westwater (George Washington University)
• Piergabriele Mancuso (Medici Archive Project)
• Alessandro Guetta (INALCO) – Tues
• Avner Ben Zaken (Ono Academic College)
• Ilana Wartenberg (Tel Aviv University)
• Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi (New York University)
• Dov Stuczynski (Bar-Ilan University)
• Evelien Chayes (Radboud University Nijmegen)
• Tovi Bibring (Bar-Ilan University)
• Marina Caffiero (Sapienza University of Rome) Thurs
• Pawel Maciejko (Johns Hopkins University)
A complete description of the program can be found on our website.