Schwartz-Reisman Graduate Student Conference In Jewish Studies, "Among Transgressors"

When and Where

Monday, April 24, 2023 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
100
Jackman Humanities Building
170 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5R 2M8

Description

Schwartz-Reisman Graduate Student Conference in Jewish Studies

"Among Transgressors" 

Date: Monday, April 24, 2023, 9 - 3PM
Location: JHB100 (170 St. George Street) / Zoom

Co-organized by Miriam Schwartz and Julie Sharff

This conference will feature two panels of advanced PhD Students' work in the Granovsky-Gluskin Collaborative Program in Jewish Studies. The first is titled "Rhetorics and Propaganda", and the second is titled "Memory in Ashkenazi Culture - Across Borders and Times". An MA panel has also been organized, titled “Gender, Representation, and Grief”, featuring scholars in the early stages of their work sharing their research. 

Graduate students in the Granovsky-Gluskin Collaborative Program in Jewish Studies will come together to share their interdisciplinary ideas in the field on this exciting day. For more information please view the program here: PDF iconPublic Program - ATCJS 2023 Schwartz-Reisman Graduate Student Conference in Jewish Studies.pdf

Schedule: 

10:00 Opening Remarks
          Doris Bergen 
          Acting Grauate Director, Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies
          Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto

          Miriam Schwartz
          PhD Candidate, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

          Julie Sharff
          PhD Candidate, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

10:15 Panel 1, "Memory in Ashkenazi Culture: Across Borders and Times"

          Chair: Mordechay Benzaquen
          PhD Student, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations

          Miriam Borden
          PhD Candidate, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

          Oksana Dudko 
          PhD Candidate, Department of History

          Victoria Abel
          PhD Candidate, Faculty of Information

11:45 Break

12:45 Panel 2, "Rhetoric and Propaganda"

          Chair: Virginia Shewfelt
          PhD Candidate, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

          Ari Adler 
          PhD Candidate, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations

          Stephanie Redekop 
          PhD Candidate, Department of English

          Emily Pascoe
          PhD Candidate, Department for the Study of Religion

14:15 Break

14:30 Masters Students Lightning Round 

         Chair: Camila Collins Araiza
          PhD Student, Department of History

         Hannah B. Wickham
         MA Student, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

         Charlotte Gibbs
           MA Student, Department of History

          Allison Kinahan
           MA Student, Department of History

 

Keynote Panel at 4PM:  “Beyond Politics: German-Jewish Refugees and Racism in South Africa”

Shirli Gilbert (University College London)

Date: Monday, April 24, 2023, at 4PM
Location: JHB100/ Zoom
 

Description: 

Between 1933 and the outbreak of World War II, around 6,000 Jews fleeing Nazi Germany landed on South Africa’s shores. Most came not because of any particular connection to the country, but simply because—for a time, at least—it was one of the few places in the world that would let them in. Unlike many other places of refuge in the global south, however, South Africa became a place of settlement rather than of transit: the vast majority who arrived chose to stay.

In this talk I will explore how the German Jewish refugees’ historical experiences of antisemitism informed their engagement with South African racism before and during the early years of apartheid. While a number of refugees were outspoken in their opposition to the regime, the majority engaged with their adopted country in more ambivalent ways. A limited body of research has documented the refugees’ contributions to South African social and cultural life and the close-knit communities they established upon arrival, but almost no work has been done on how the Nazi past informed this particular Jewish group’s protracted engagement with the post-war world’s quintessential racial state.

 

Shirli Gilbert is a specialist in modern Jewish history, with particular interest in the Holocaust and its legacies, modern Jewish identity, and Jews in South Africa. She holds a D. Phil in Modern History from the University of Oxford and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan. Before coming to UCL, she was Karten Professor of Modern History and Director of the Parkes Institute for Jewish/ non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton.

 

***

The keynote panel will be delivered in-person at JHB100 and virtually via Zoom. To attend virtually, please click THIS LINK on Monday, April 24 at 4 PM.

 

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170 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5R 2M8

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