Judaism
How German Isn’t It
To be Jewish in Germany today is to abrogate the possibility of being German and Jewish.
Book at Lunchtime: Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism
Book at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held weekly during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines. The events are free to attend and open to all. About the book:
The emancipatory promise of liberalism - and its exclusionary qualities - shaped the fate of Jews in many parts of the world during the age of empire. Yet historians have mostly understood the relationship between Jews, liberalism and antisemitism as a European story, defined by the collapse of liberalism and the Holocaust. This volume challenges that perspective by taking a global approach. It takes account of recent historical work that explores issues of race, discrimination and hybrid identities in colonial and postcolonial settings, but which has done so without taking much account of Jews. Individual essays explore how liberalism, citizenship, nationality, gender, religion, race functioned differently in European Jewish heartlands, in the Mediterranean peripheries of Spain and the Ottoman empire, and in the North American Atlantic world.
Speakers:
Professor Abigail Green is Professor of Modern European History at Brasenose College, Oxford. Her recent work focuses on international Jewish history and transnational humanitarian activism. She is currently completing a three year Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship, working on a new book on liberalism and the Jews, tentatively titled Children of 1848: Liberalism and the Jews from the Revolutions to Human Rights. Working in partnership with colleagues in the heritage sector, she is also leading a major four year AHRC-funded project on Jewish country houses.
Professor Simon Levis Sullam is Associate Professor of Modern History at Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice, Italy. His fields of interest include the history of ideas and culture in Europe between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century, with a particular focus on nationalisms and fascism; the history of the Jews and of Anti-Semitism; the history of the Holocaust; the history of historiography, and questions of historical method. His many publications include, most recently, The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy.
Professor Adam Sutcliffe is Professor of European History and co-director of the Centre for Enlightenment Studies at King’s College London. His research has focused on in the intellectual history of Western Europe between approximately 1650 and 1850, and on the history of Jews, Judaism and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in Europe from 1600 to the present. Professor Sutcliffe’s most recent publication, What Are Jews For? History, Peoplehood and Purpose, is a wide-ranging look at the history of Western thinking on the purpose of the Jewish people.
Dr Kei Hiruta is Assistant Professor and AIAS-COFUND Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research lies at the intersection of political philosophy and intellectual history, with particular interest in theories of freedom in modern political thought. His book Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity will be published from Princeton University Press in autumn 2021.
Knowledge Exchange Showcase - Jewish Country Houses
Abigail Green (Faculty of History), Nino Strachey (National Trust), and Silvia Davoli, (Strawberry Hill House) give a presentation on their Knowledge Exchange research project on Jewish Country Houses Professor Abigail Green is Tutorial Fellow in History at Brasenose College. She works at the interface between modern European history and international Jewish history, and is the author of Fatherlands: State-building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (2001), which was shortlisted in the Historisches Buch awards, and of Moses Montefiore: Jewish Hero, Imperial Liberator (2010), which won the Sami Rohr Choice Award, and was nominated a TLS Book of the Year and a New Republic Best Book of 2010. She is working on a book tentatively entitled Children of 1848: Liberalism and the Jews from the Revolutions to Human Rights, to be published by Princeton University Press, and has just been awarded a 4 year AHRC Research Grant to lead a major collaborative project ‘Jewish Country Houses – Objects, Networks People’.
Nino Strachey, National Trust
Nino Strachey is Head of Research and Specialist Advice for the National Trust. Since starting her career with the Landmark Trust, she has worked for English Heritage and the National Trust, curating the homes of scientists (Darwin), politicians (Churchill) and writers (Shaw). Her research focuses on the expression of personality through place, interpreting the biography of buildings and collections. Her recent book 'Rooms of their own: Eddy Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West' looks at the homes of three writers linked to the Bloomsbury Group, and explores changing attitudes to sexuality and gender in the 1920s and 30s. She is a Trustee of the Strawberry Hill Collections Trust, a member of the Mercers Heritage and Arts Advisory Group, and has been a Guardian of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings
Silvia Davoli, Strawberry Hill House
Dr Silvia Davoli is the Research Curator at Strawberry Hill House and is a specialist in the history of collecting. Since 2013 she has been researching the whereabouts of the Horace Walpole Collection. She recently curated the exhibition Strawberry Hill Lost Treasures. Masterpieces from the Horace Walpole Collection (Oct. 2018- Feb.2019). In the past years she has conducted provenance research for a number of museums such as the Wallace Collection, National Gallery of London, Waddesdon Manor and the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin. She is one of the core members of the Jewish Country House Project. Her contribution in particular focus on Jewish Collectors and art dealers.