Category Archives: News

CfP for the “Sommerakademie” of the Institute for Jewish History in Austria: “Von Samson, Superwoman und Krusty, dem Clown – Jüdische Bilder-Geschichten seit dem Mittelalter” (in German)

The Institute for Jewish History in Austria, St. Pölten, invites for paper proposals for its “Somerakademie” on the topic “Von Samson, Superwoman und Krusty, dem Clown – Jüdische Bilder-Geschichten seit dem Mittelalter”, which will be held in Vienna from July 8-10, 2026. The conference aims to explore Jewish pictorial histories from medieval book illumination, illuminated Esther scrolls, copperplate engravings, and picture books to the comics, animated films, and graphic novels of the 20th and 21st centuries. Proposals are welcome in German or English.

Submission Deadline for Paper Proposals: December 12, 2025

New book (available for pre-order) — Craig Perry, Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History

Princeton University Press, January 2026.

From the publisher: “In this book, Craig Perry mines a remarkable cache of fragmentary documents preserved in an Egyptian synagogue to write a new history of slavery and the slave trade in the medieval Middle East. These documents—which range from the everyday correspondence of traveling merchants to legal queries sent to Jewish jurists—provide the richest surviving archive for the social history of slavery during the centuries when Cairo was an imperial and commercial capital at the intersection of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. Perry draws on this archive, known as the Cairo Geniza, to shed new light on such crucial topics as the slave trade in state diplomacy, the entanglements of gender and household slavery, and the lives of the enslaved.”

New Ph.D. Fellowship in Sephardic Studies at Brandeis University

Brandeis University invites applicants for The Edmond J. Safra Doctoral Fellowships in Sephardic Studies.  The fellowships include an annual stipend for five years, health care coverage, and additional funds in the amount of $5,000 per year for summer study (language preparation, travel for research, etc.).  Prospective PhD students apply directly through a relevant department (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, History, etc.) and indicate that they wish to be considered for a Fellowship. Brandeis especially encourages applicants wishing to focus on the Jews of medieval Spain, the medieval Middle East, or the Ottoman Empire/Middle East through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.