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Institute of Jewish Studies
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Members
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Main topics
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The core mission of the research unit at the "Institute of Jewish Studies" at the University of Antwerp is located in the establishment of an interdisciplinary, internationally embedded research center, focusing on Jewish Studies in the broadest sense of the concept and approaching this research era from a multitude of perspectives and methodologies. In order to realise this mission, the Institute of Jewish Studies hosts and executes scientific research and provides academic and professional services through the institutionalisation of (post)academic education (minor in Jewish Studies for BA in the Humanities, language courses, series of lectures) and through the organisation of lectures, conferences, seminars and workshops. The Institute endeavours openness and diversity, both in its approaches and its aims. The Institute of Jewish Studies envisages itself as a forum for interaction between various scientific disciplines in interdisciplinary research, between the university and heterogeneous groups in society. The field of productive tension within which the Institute deploys its activities, is determined by the interest in and attention for a particular, historically formed life style and culture on the one hand and by the determination to give space to this interest within an academic context on the other. An important dimension of the research efforts within the Institutes materialises in the contractual research executed by PhD or postdoctoral students.
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Website
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http://www.ua.ac.be/main.aspx?c=*IJS
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Projects
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Show the projects of this research team - Scientific research in the context of the book project "A Tenuous Legacy. Confronting the Jewish Tradition in Modern Thought. " 01/01/2013 - 30/06/2013
| Abstract | This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel. | | Duration | 01/01/2013 - 30/06/2013 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Die Kreatur: Inter-Religious Dialogue and the Political-Theology of the Creature in the Weimar Republic (1926-1930). 01/12/2011 - 31/10/2012
| Abstract | This project represents a formal research agreement between UA and on the other hand Rothschild Foundation. UA provides Rothschild Foundation research results mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions as stipulated in this contract. | | Duration | 01/12/2011 - 31/10/2012 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Between tekhné and technics. Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Herbert Marcuse, and Hans Jonas. 01/10/2011 - 30/09/2013
| Abstract | Recently, a large number of studies have been devoted to the influence of Martin Heidegger''s thought on his Jewish students, given his brief allegiance to national-socialism. Most of these studies however seem to neglect the importance of a phenomenon that he himself has pointed out as being an important ground on which he based his decision to support this political movement, i.e. the emergence of modern technics. This research will therefore try to establish that the philosophical writings of some of the most prominent of these students -Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Herbert Marcuse, and Hans Jonas- should be understood as a critical interpretation and re-appropriation of Heidegger''s early writings on the division between technique and technology. | | Duration | 01/10/2011 - 30/09/2013 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Publication: "Fremde Gemeinschaften. Deutsch-jüdische Literatur der Moderne". 08/03/2011 - 31/12/2011
| Abstract | This project represents a research contract awarded by the University of Antwerp. The supervisor provides the Antwerp University research mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions stipulated by the university. | | Duration | 08/03/2011 - 31/12/2011 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- "As German as Kafka". A Comparative Analysis of the Articulation of National Identity in German-Jewish Literature in the early 20th Century and German Literature of Migration in the early 21st Century. 01/01/2011 - 31/12/2014
| Abstract | This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel. | | Duration | 01/01/2011 - 31/12/2014 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Why Kafka? On the concepts 'singularity' and 'universality' in the philosophical reception of his work. 01/01/2011 - 31/12/2014
| Abstract | This interdisciplinary research project takes its cue from the paradoxical reception of Kafka''s work in philosophy and literary criticism. While the latter, though bent on the particularities of Kafka''s writing, mostly emphasizes the universal meaning of his work, the former, traditionally concerned with universals, refers to Kafka''s work as a means of illustrating an experience of singularity. Taking this paradox as a starting point, the project aims at revealing the discrepancies between the literary object and its accompanying discourses. More specifically, it plans to give renewed attention to the ways in which the literary dimension of Kafka''s work relates the singular and the universal, a characteristic that has been neglected both in philosophical references to
Kafka attempting to recover the singular in conceptual terms, and in literary criticism''s tendency to regard his work as an expression of a universal condition humaine. The research project will pursue this goal through an analysis of key 20th-century philosophical works that have interrogated Kafka''s work. This study will evaluate the philosophical reception of Kafka''s work against the backdrop of analyses of the nature of literary language, the peculiarities of the narrative organization of literary discourse and the theme of modernity in his work. | | Duration | 01/01/2011 - 31/12/2014 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Research in the field of children's literature in the Low Countries. 22/02/2010 - 30/09/2010
| Abstract | No abstract found | | Duration | 22/02/2010 - 30/09/2010 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Between Tekhné and Technics. Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Herbert Marcuse, and Hans Jonas. 01/10/2009 - 30/09/2011
| Abstract | Recently, a large number of studies have been devoted to the influence of Martin Heidegger''s thought on his Jewish students, given his brief allegiance to national-socialism. Most of these studies however seem to neglect the importance of a phenomenon that he himself has pointed out as being an important ground on which he based his decision to support this political movement, i.e. the emergence of modern technics. This research will therefore try to establish that the philosophical writings of some of the most prominent of these students -Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Herbert Marcuse, and Hans Jonas- should be understood as a critical interpretation and re-appropriation of Heidegger''s early writings on the division between technique and technology. | | Duration | 01/10/2009 - 30/09/2011 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Research within the Institute for Jewish Studies. 10/06/2009 - 31/05/2010
| Abstract | No abstract found | | Duration | 10/06/2009 - 31/05/2010 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Chair UCSIA-IJS/UA Jewish-Christian relationships. 01/10/2008 - 30/09/2013
| Abstract | The purpose of this Chair is to promote the study of the History of Judaism and Hebraism from the perspective of the Jewish-Christian dialogue, leading to a better understanding of the impact of this tradition on contemporary European culture and of its contribution to the interreligious dialogue. | | Duration | 01/10/2008 - 30/09/2013 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Tikkun and techné. A research into the Jewish contribution to the question concerning technology. 01/10/2008 - 30/09/2009
| Abstract | Technology is omnipresent in our society, not only through the quantitative dissemination of devices and machines, but also and mainly through the qualitative change our way of thinking and acting is subject to. Although this technicisation of society is mainly a modern phenomenon, we can find both in Plato and Aristotle many references to techné. Through the neoplatonic and neoaristotelian tradition, and mainly through Heidegger''s revisiting of this theme, the conceptual framework of this Greek view on techné continues to influence contemporary philosophy of technology. This dualist heritage makes that modern and contemporary interpretations often view technology as a phenomenon which is external to man and culture. This research project intends to to develop an alternative view on technology through Jewish thought which could prove especially fruitful to think the developments in contemporary technology. | | Duration | 01/10/2008 - 30/09/2009 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Sentimentalism and Modernism in Silent American Narrative Cinema: the Films of Frances Marion (1914-1928). 01/10/2007 - 30/09/2010
| Abstract | In my research project I would like to suggest a more complex notion of the relation between film and modernity than is usually assumed. Most accounts of this relation are based on the `modernity thesis'' (David Bordwell''s term), which states that film is like modernity, a part of modernity as well as a consequence of modernity. Like modernism - the aesthetic response to modernity - that presented itself as the embodiment of the `new'' and a radical break with the past, film was primarily regarded in terms of innovation and rejection of the old world. In the course of turning away from earlier art forms modernism rejected and repressed sentimentalism, one of the dominant and influential artistic expressions of the nineteenth century. In the field of literature recent research has uncovered the mechanisms of this rejection and has unearthed authors, works and literary modes that carry important traces of the sentimentalist tradition while being at the same time fully ''modern.'' In a groundbreaking study Suzanne Clark has fruitfully explored the marginalized workings of sentimentalism in the work of female authors and, in coining the deliberate oxymoron ''sentimental modernism'', has successfully widened the canon and the concept of modernism. I want to show that the concept of a ''sentimental modernism'' is even more relevant for film than it is for literature, since film inherently appeals to mass audiences and plays more directly and openly on emotive responses and an affective impact than the written word. The tension between modernism and sentimentalism in early cinema thereby constitutes a major dimension of the `vexed dialogue'' between high modernism and avant-garde cultures on the one hand and the popular medium of film on the other. Early American films scripted by women are a particularly striking case in point. The remnants of American sentimentalism, which had given women artists a voice, albeit within the boundaries of suitable topics, traditional forms and from a restricted (domestic) sphere, manifest themselves not only in literature but also in film. This is not entirely surprising, since the writing women of Hollywood (responsible for half of the films produced between 1915-1930) can be considered as either having been recruited from the descendants of Hawthorne''s `scribbling women'' or at least as having been influenced by them. Thus women screenwriters '' also looking to give audiences what they wanted - turned to sentimental, popular, melodramatic (sensational, affecting) and familiar short stories, novels and plays for adaptations. When writing their own original material they also tended to turn to crowd-pleasing, inclusive and `friendly'' narratives while at the same time displaying fundamentally modernist features such as modes and techniques of production, a fascination with modern technologies and subjects (WWI, emergence of flappers, capitalism), as well as formal modes of montage and dissolves and modern, mostly urban settings. My paper will explore this interaction between modernism and sentimentalism and argue for the importance of a ''sentimental modernism'' for a better understanding of classical Hollywood cinema.
I will illustrate my analysis with selected films by screenwriter Frances Marion, one of Hollywood''s best-paid and highly successful professional women screenwriters, whose work is paradigmatic for such an alternative approach to modernist film. | | Duration | 01/10/2007 - 30/09/2010 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Tikkun and Tekhne: Jewish Answers to Heidegger's 'Frage nach der Technik'. 01/07/2007 - 30/09/2007
| Abstract | No abstract found | | Duration | 01/07/2007 - 30/09/2007 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Word Play in the Hebrew Bible and the versiones antiquae. 01/02/2007 - 31/01/2009
| Abstract | No abstract found | | Duration | 01/02/2007 - 31/01/2009 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Text and Music in Transformation and Interaction. A Study of the Relationship between Modern German Poetry and Arnold Schoenberg's Free-Atonal Composition Technique. 01/01/2007 - 31/12/2008
| Abstract | Purpose of the research project is an analytic study of the relationship between on the one hand the compositional strategies in the free-atonal works by Arnold Schönberg, and on the other hand the characteristics of the affiliated German poetry. By means of a thorough analysis of both the musical score and the poems (form, structure, content) set to music, it will be investigated to what extent certain aspects of the contemporary poetry may have given direction to the musical composition. | | Duration | 01/01/2007 - 31/12/2008 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Walter Benjamin's Theory of Eingedenken. 01/01/2007 - 31/03/2007
| Abstract | A study of the theological and ethical aspects of the philosophical work of Walter benjamin, notably his theory of Eingedenken (commemoration, mourning). Prof. Hanssen will relate Benjamin''s work to that of other ethical thinkers (Kierkegaard, Buber and Levinas) and she will investigate to what extent Benjamin''s motif of Eingedenken, developed during his exile in Paris, was taken over in the theories of the Gennan sociologist Juergen Habermas and the theologian J. B. Metz. | | Duration | 01/01/2007 - 31/03/2007 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- The Perspective of the Child in Literary Texts about the Holocaust. 01/10/2006 - 30/09/2010
| Abstract | This project analyzes the characteristics, functions and effects of the child''s perspective in Holocaust literature. It is neither noncommittal nor coincidental that a large number of texts about the Holocaust chooses this narratological strategy. The child, associated with innocence, ignorance and vulnerability, contrasts maximally with the extreme; calculated violence of the Holocaust. | | Duration | 01/10/2006 - 30/09/2010 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Sentimentalism and Modernism in Early American Narrative Cinema (1915-1928): The Films of Frances Marion. 01/10/2005 - 30/09/2007
| Abstract | In my research project I would like to suggest a more complex notion of the relation between film and modernity than is usually assumed. Most accounts of this relation are based on the `modernity thesis'' (David Bordwell''s term), which states that film is like modernity, a part of modernity as well as a consequence of modernity. Like modernism - the aesthetic response to modernity - that presented itself as the embodiment of the `new'' and a radical break with the past, film was primarily regarded in terms of innovation and rejection of the old world. In the course of turning away from earlier art forms modernism rejected and repressed sentimentalism, one of the dominant and influential artistic expressions of the nineteenth century. In the field of literature recent research has uncovered the mechanisms of this rejection and has unearthed authors, works and literary modes that carry important traces of the sentimentalist tradition while being at the same time fully ''modern.'' In a groundbreaking study Suzanne Clark has fruitfully explored the marginalized workings of sentimentalism in the work of female authors and, in coining the deliberate oxymoron ''sentimental modernism'', has successfully widened the canon and the concept of modernism. I want to show that the concept of a ''sentimental modernism'' is even more relevant for film than it is for literature, since film inherently appeals to mass audiences and plays more directly and openly on emotive responses and an affective impact than the written word. The tension between modernism and sentimentalism in early cinema thereby constitutes a major dimension of the `vexed dialogue'' between high modernism and avant-garde cultures on the one hand and the popular medium of film on the other. Early American films scripted by women are a particularly striking case in point. The remnants of American sentimentalism, which had given women artists a voice, albeit within the boundaries of suitable topics, traditional forms and from a restricted (domestic) sphere, manifest themselves not only in literature but also in film. This is not entirely surprising, since the writing women of Hollywood (responsible for half of the films produced between 1915-1930) can be considered as either having been recruited from the descendants of Hawthorne''s `scribbling women'' or at least as having been influenced by them. Thus women screenwriters '' also looking to give audiences what they wanted - turned to sentimental, popular, melodramatic (sensational, affecting) and familiar short stories, novels and plays for adaptations. When writing their own original material they also tended to turn to crowd-pleasing, inclusive and `friendly'' narratives while at the same time displaying fundamentally modernist features such as modes and techniques of production, a fascination with modern technologies and subjects (WWI, emergence of flappers, capitalism), as well as formal modes of montage and dissolves and modern, mostly urban settings. My paper will explore this interaction between modernism and sentimentalism and argue for the importance of a ''sentimental modernism'' for a better understanding of classical Hollywood cinema.
I will illustrate my analysis with selected films by screenwriter Frances Marion, one of Hollywood''s best-paid and highly successful professional women screenwriters, whose work is paradigmatic for such an alternative approach to modernist film. | | Duration | 01/10/2005 - 30/09/2007 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Price of the BFVUG 2005. 23/09/2005 - 31/12/2005
| Abstract | No abstract found | | Duration | 23/09/2005 - 31/12/2005 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Sentimentalism and Modernism in Early American Narrative Cinema : The Films of Frances Marion. 01/10/2004 - 30/09/2005
| Abstract | In my research project I would like to suggest a more complex notion of the relation between film and modernity than is usually assumed. Most accounts of this relation are based on the `modernity thesis'' (David Bordwell''s term), which states that film is like modernity, a part of modernity as well as a consequence of modernity. Like modernism - the aesthetic response to modernity - that presented itself as the embodiment of the `new'' and a radical break with the past, film was primarily regarded in terms of innovation and rejection of the old world. In the course of turning away from earlier art forms modernism rejected and repressed sentimentalism, one of the dominant and influential artistic expressions of the nineteenth century. In the field of literature recent research has uncovered the mechanisms of this rejection and has unearthed authors, works and literary modes that carry important traces of the sentimentalist tradition while being at the same time fully ''modern.'' In a groundbreaking study Suzanne Clark has fruitfully explored the marginalized workings of sentimentalism in the work of female authors and, in coining the deliberate oxymoron ''sentimental modernism'', has successfully widened the canon and the concept of modernism. I want to show that the concept of a ''sentimental modernism'' is even more relevant for film than it is for literature, since film inherently appeals to mass audiences and plays more directly and openly on emotive responses and an affective impact than the written word. The tension between modernism and sentimentalism in early cinema thereby constitutes a major dimension of the `vexed dialogue'' between high modernism and avant-garde cultures on the one hand and the popular medium of film on the other. Early American films scripted by women are a particularly striking case in point. The remnants of American sentimentalism, which had given women artists a voice, albeit within the boundaries of suitable topics, traditional forms and from a restricted (domestic) sphere, manifest themselves not only in literature but also in film. This is not entirely surprising, since the writing women of Hollywood (responsible for half of the films produced between 1915-1930) can be considered as either having been recruited from the descendants of Hawthorne''s `scribbling women'' or at least as having been influenced by them. Thus women screenwriters '' also looking to give audiences what they wanted - turned to sentimental, popular, melodramatic (sensational, affecting) and familiar short stories, novels and plays for adaptations. When writing their own original material they also tended to turn to crowd-pleasing, inclusive and `friendly'' narratives while at the same time displaying fundamentally modernist features such as modes and techniques of production, a fascination with modern technologies and subjects (WWI, emergence of flappers, capitalism), as well as formal modes of montage and dissolves and modern, mostly urban settings. My paper will explore this interaction between modernism and sentimentalism and argue for the importance of a ''sentimental modernism'' for a better understanding of classical Hollywood cinema.
I will illustrate my analysis with selected films by screenwriter Frances Marion, one of Hollywood''s best-paid and highly successful professional women screenwriters, whose work is paradigmatic for such an alternative approach to modernist film. | | Duration | 01/10/2004 - 30/09/2005 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Jewish Identity in the (Literature of the) GDR. 01/10/2003 - 31/08/2004
| Abstract | No abstract found | | Duration | 01/10/2003 - 31/08/2004 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Flanders in Nazi-Germany (1933-1945). Investigating the building of an image. 01/10/2003 - 31/12/2004
| Abstract | The central focus of this study is an investigation of the image of `Flanders'' in Nazi-Germany. This image will be analysed from different perspectives on the basis of a varied corpus of books and magazines published in German between 1933 and 1945: with respect to contents (recurrent themes and motifs, synchronic incon-sistencies and diachronic changes), with respect to discursive strategies (and their use of imagery, genres, narratological structures, pragmatic strategies, intertextual references'') and with respect to the specificity of fiction in the construction of this image. The results will be put into perspective by embedding the image building process in its historical and political-ideological framework. | | Duration | 01/10/2003 - 31/12/2004 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
- Opening Up the Nursery : Dislocation of the Child Motif in Today's Western Children's Literature. 01/10/2003 - 30/09/2004
| Abstract | No abstract found | | Duration | 01/10/2003 - 30/09/2004 | | Researcher(s) | | | Research Team(s) | |
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Expertise
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Show the team expertise- Liska Vivian
- Focusing on Jewish Studies in the broadest sense of the concept and approaching this research era from a multitude of perspectives and methodologies.
| Technique: | Conceptual analysis. | | Users: | The experience, know how and knowledge of the Institute of Jewish Studies can be sollicited by a heterogeneous and broad audience concerning cultural background, education, age, geography including academics, researchers, professionals in the field of Jewish Studies; individuals, students, institutions from Belgium and abroad. | | Keywords: | JEWISH STUDIES, JIDDISH, HEBREW, GERMAN-JEWISH LITERATURE, HOLOCAUST, JEWISH LITERATURE, JEWISH CULTURE |
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