This KNIR Colloquium is organized by Dr. Laura Almagor.
The workshop will bring into direct dialogue the fields of Jewish studies and postcolonial studies. By doing so, participants representing both fields will not only enrich their various sub-disciplines, but together they will aim to transcend the methodological insularity that both postcolonial studies and Jewish studies have suffered from vis-à-vis each other, despite their potentially close methodological and ethical affinities. In recent years, several pioneering scholarly initiatives have already made important strides towards an opening of the conversation between both fields. Currently, the Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023, followed by the enduring violence inflicted on the Palestinian population of Gaza by the Israeli armed forces have dramatically stifled these sensitive scholarly conversations that nonetheless continue to have the potential of bridging not only scholarly, but also political and personal divides.
This colloquium aspires to reopen the precarious conversation between Jewish studies and postcolonial studies. What, we ask, can be gained when the latest methods from the cutting-edge and ever-developing field of postcolonial studies are applied to Jewish studies? And, vice versa, what can insights from Jewish studies, including Mizrahi studies, Holocaust and memory studies, and studies dealing with Jewish-Palestinian encounters, do to enhance the depth and nuance of postcolonial studies? And, on a more self-reflective and ethical level, why is it that two potentially kindred fields have resisted collaboration for many decades, and what can we as scholars learn from this process about the political realities and positionalities that we ourselves are unavoidably subjected to?
© square image: Couple de dignitaires dans un palais (1890) – Auguste Raynaud – Musée des Beaux Arts de Narbonne
© banner image: Jodensavanne (1830) – Pierre Jacques Benoit (1782-1854)
