CFP

[petoand]

Call for Papers

"Jewish intellectual women in Europe: gendering history, politics and
culture"

 

Conference and book project of the Central European University, Department
of Gender Studies, Budapest, in cooperation with the Department of Sociology
and Social Research of the University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, supported by
the Hanadiv Foundation, London.

 

The project and related conference is devoted to gender, politics and Jewish
tradition in Europe, through the example of European women activists. 

The aim of the project is to develop a useful comparative analysis of
gender, political identity and religious heritage, based on the study of
activities and works produced by Jewish intellectual women in the interwar
and the post-Shoah period. In particular, Hannah Arendt shall be considered
as representative of the German tradition, while Zefora Lombroso, Sara
Nathan, Amelia Rosselli, Gina Lombroso and Laura Orvieto shall indicate a
specific liberal Italian Jewish tradition. Eugenia Miskolczy, Cecile and
Laura Polanyi, and Edith Bruck shall be taken as an example of a Hungarian
tradition and Käthe Leichter of an Austrian heritage that has been neglected
after WWII. 

 

We are calling for papers for conference and the planned volume on the
contribution of European Jewish intellectual women to feminist theory in
general and the redefinition of progressive politics in European countries
in particular. Proposals addressing gender and memory of Jewish female
intellectuals are encouraged. Yet papers should go beyond the description of
life stories in order to analyse the ways in which subjectivity and agency
were constructed in particular cultural and national contexts. 

The methodological approach is to use gender as a fundamental category
organising Jewish life and politics in the shaping of ethnic/ religious
identities among Jews and in the differentiation with the "majority" of the
population. This can be a valuable contribution as it creates the
possibility to rethinking the basic concepts within Jewish Studies, such as
spirituality, community, and/or political activism in European countries. 

By working across disciplines and exchanging experiences the participants of
the project can better understand the complex linkage between gender,
Judaism and political identity. The collaboration among scholars and
researchers from different countries and the comparison of the results of
their different analysis shall provide a more comprehensive gendered picture
of Jewish life as well as the construction of both nation states and Europe.


 

The working language of the conference is English. 

Please send a 800-words summary of the proposed paper by 16 October 2005 to:
Andrea Peto: petoand at t-online.hu and 

Marina Calloni: marina.calloni at unimib.it

The conference will be held at the Central European University in Budapest
on: 17th – 18th  March.