The graduate students at the Institute of Jewish Studies (University of Antwerp, Belgium) are organizing an international graduate conference on reconceptualizations of Jewishness in postwar Europe, in its concrete historical and geographical aspects and in its manifestations within cultural production. The persecution and annihilation of European Jewry during the Third Reich decimated the Jewish population in Europe and left Jewish life fundamentally uprooted. After the liberation from the Nazi-regime, the laborious and complex reconstructions of Jewish communities followed different trajectories.
The conference aims at exploring these reconstructions and reconceptualizations by highlighting the relevance of their various political and historical contexts and by examining the cultural inscriptions of these contexts. The conference welcomes both theoretical and empirical approaches (case studies) which shed light on narratives and reports of reconceptualizing Jewishness in European cultures and literatures. We welcome approaches from different angles and disciplines (history, literary criticism, philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, psychology, history of art, economics, political science, etc.) with an emphasis on both historical perspectives and literary analysis. We hope to gain insights not only into reflections on postwar articulations of Jewish identity but also into the specific possibilities and limitations of particular disciplines, as well as into the complex interrelatedness between historical research and literary narratives.
The conference will be held in English. Please send 300 word proposals in English and a short cv no later than October 1st 2004 to: ijsgraduate@ua.ac.be
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