Senior seminar 'Between Empire and Nation: Jewish thought in historical transition'
Senior seminar by Prof. Cedric Cohen-Skalli (University of Haifa), visiting professor at Memory Lab.
This series of four seminars is conceived as a set of research seminars for master’s and PhD students. They address the neglected theme of Jewish imperial memory, and the series proposes a broad overview of Jewish intellectual involvement with early modern and modern empires, focusing on two aspects in particular:
- Jewish expectations from emerging empires in early modern and modern times
- Jewish reactions to the traumas inflicted by these empires (expulsions, colonization, the Holocaust)
The past few decades have witnessed remarkable advances in the historical and conceptual understanding of empire, imperialism and colonialism. To date, these advances have left only a minimal mark on the study of modern Jewish thought. Due, among other things, to the historical success of Zionism, and the narrative of the “Jewish contribution” to Western nation-states (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, etc.), the dominant paradigm in scholarship has been and remains that of the nation-state. Jewish studies have compartmentalized Jewish thought: Iberian-Sephardic Jewish thought, German Jewish thought, French Jewish thought, Zionist-Israeli Jewish thought, Anglo-American Jewish thought. As a consequence, the early modern and modern imperial contexts were considered as a mere background to or stage for religious, scientific or national evolutions in Jewish thought. Taking into account the imperial paradigm enables a new trans-national perspective on Jewish thought in early modern and modern times, as will be demonstrated in this series of lectures.
1. Expectations and Expulsion: The Shifting Imperial Positioning of Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508)
October 7th 2025, 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm, Aula Gambi, Department of History and Cultures, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2
Link to the event: https://centri.unibo.it/memorylab/en/agenda/expectations-and-expulsion-the-shifting-imperial-positioning-of-isaac-abravanel-1437-1508
2. The Debate between Hermann Cohen and Martin Buber during World War I
October 9th 2025, 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm, Aula Gambi, Department of History and Cultures, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2
Link to the event: https://centri.unibo.it/memorylab/en/agenda/the-debate-between-hermann-cohen-and-martin-buber-during-world-war-i
3. Abraham Serfaty, or the Return of the Sephardic Question during the Decolonization
October 14th 2025, 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm, Aula Gambi, Department of History and Cultures, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2
Link to the event: https://centri.unibo.it/memorylab/en/agenda/abraham-serfaty-or-the-return-of-the-sephardic-question-during-the-decolonization
4. Between selective memory and oblivion: toward a new interreligious history of the Cremieux Decree
October 17th 2025, 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm, Aula Gambi, Department of History and Cultures, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2
Link to the event: https://centri.unibo.it/memorylab/en/agenda/between-selective-memory-and-oblivion-toward-a-new-interreligious-history-of-the-cremieux-decree