Call for Papers: Newberry Library Symposium on Animality in pre-modern Jewish art and culture.

Graduate students and early career scholars are invited to send in paper abstracts for a two-day symposium on animality in pre-modern, and particularly medieval, Jewish art and culture. The symposium, which will take place at the Newberry Library in Chicago on May 14-15, 2024 (just after the ICMS at Kalamazoo), will address a plethora of topics, including cosmic ecologies and their continuities across the animal-human-divine-demonic spectrum, collisions — visual and textual — between humanities and animalities; bestialization as a heuristic; animalization of Jews in Jewish and Christian discourses; zoocephaly in material and literary sources; monstrosities and hybridities as sites of wonder and liminality. We have already assembled a cohort of established scholars in the fields of Art History and Judaic Studies to speak at the symposium, and our hope is to include some new voices as well.

Please submit a C.V. and 250 word abstract by August 15th to the organizers:
Elina Gertsman exg152@case.edu
Julie Harris marfiles@comcast.net
David Shyovitz davidshy@northwestern.edu

We are delighted to announce that registration is now open for “Opening the Sacred Text: Meaning, Materiality, Historiography”. Bringing together scholars from around the world, we will explore the decorative frontispieces and so-called carpet pages that are a remarkable feature of manuscripts from diverse cultures, including Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

The conference will be online, via Zoom, and we’ll send out a Zoom link to registered participants nearer the time.

The conference will run over three days (Monday 21 February 2022 – Wednesday 23 February 2022), with a 2pm GMT start each day. We hope that the timing and the online format will make the conference accessible to as many people as possible.

For an up-to-date list of speakers, please visit:

modelsofauthority.ac.uk/blog/

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/opening-the-sacred-text-meaning-materiality-historiography-tickets-235877404667carpet-pages/

Very much looking forward to seeing you there,

Stewart J. Brookes and Julie Harris

“Illuminating the Account of Creation (Ma’aseh Breshit) in Hebrew Manuscripts from Ashkenaz,” in: Reading the Bible in the Pre-Modern World: Interpretation, Performance and Image, eds. Chanita Goodblatt and Howard Kreisel, Ben-Gurion University Press 2021, pp. 257-304

• Posted in: Art, Awards & Honors, People
• Posted on: November 14, 2021

Mazel tov to Dr. Emile Schrijver, the recipient of the 2021 Bezalel, Mordechai, and Nessa Narkiss prize for excellence in the research of Jewish Art,  presented by the Center for Jewish Art at Hebrew University!

Emile is the General Director Jewish Historical Museum and Jewish Cultural Quarter, Amsterdam (since 2015); Professor of Jewish Book History, University of Amsterdam; curator of the private Braginsky collection in Zurich; from 1986-2015 curator of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana.

He is also the chair of the Association of European Jewish Museums (and in addition he has just published a novel, a literary thriller titled “De Hillel Codex” — which we really hope comes out soon in English translation).

The award will be presented at an online ceremony November 29, at 19:00 CET — at which time Emile will give a lecture titled “Jewish art history and Jewish book history meet for the last time: The end of Hebrew manuscript decoration in Western Europe.”

You can attend the ceremony and talk via this Zoom link: https://tinyurl.com/NarkissPrize

Click here to see the list of previous Narkiss prize winners, going back to 1988

Click here to read an article that Emile wrote for JHE in June 2020 about the post-pandemic future of European Jewish museumsShare

Eight highly focused studies on Maimonides and those around him.

Recently published by Gorgias Press. http://www.gorgiaspress.com

Discount available for Blog readers.

(https://www.gorgiaspress.com/in-and-around-maimonides), add the book to your cart and then, on checkout, simply add this coupon code MJSNOW40 to the ‘Discount Code’ box (bottom left), and then select ‘Apply Coupon’. The code will turn blue when it is successfully applied.
The coupon is valid from today until the end of the month as from October 1st the book will be 40% off in our annual sale, so from that date the discount is automatic (no coupon needed).

The Luzzatto High Holiday Mahzor, created in southern Germany in late 13th or early 14th century, is one of fewer than 20 such prayer books believed to be in existence. According to Sotheby’s, it is the most important medieval illustrated prayer book to be offered for sale in a century…