Conference: Jewish Difference Under Empire

Jewish Difference Under Empire:Identity and Alterity across the Maghreb, France, and Israel/Palestine Scholarship in Jewish studies has become increasingly attentive to the impact of colonial expansion and transnational exchange on Jewish life and writing. As the editors of the recent volume, Colonialism and the Jews put it: “In failing to grapple with colonialism, Jewish historians disregarded essential dimensions of the modern Jewish experience. In European colonies from the British antipodes to French North Africa, Jewish economic, religious, and social life was transformed in important ways by the encounter with empire.” Taking this as our starting point, we aim to continue conversations about the overlaps between Judaism and “other Others,” to use and expand Sergei Dogolpolski’s term. The goal is not to create an overarching theory of alterity, but to explore new possibilities for conceptualizing the production of race, minority, and difference, and the philosophical and political responses generated out of those experiences.