2025–2026 Events
Sandi DuBowski Film Retrospective
On Sept. 3–5, supported by the Dianne Cummins Community Education Fund, the Melton Center partnered with the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Columbus Jewish Film Festival to present a retrospective of filmmaker Sandi DuBowski. The retrospective presented DuBowski’s films as works that trace the possibilities and pressures of queer Jewish life, religious creativity, and communal change. Over the course of two landmark feature films and a number of shorts, DuBowski has become one of the leading documentarians examining the intersections of Jewish and queer communities. Following the screenings, DuBowski presented question-and-answer sessions with the audience.
The first program paired DuBowski’s early short film Tomboychik (1993) with his landmark feature-length documentary Trembling Before G-d (2001), shown in celebration of the film’s 25th anniversary. Trembling Before G-d explores the spiritual lives and struggles of queer Orthodox Jews through the stories of LGBTQ Hasidic and Orthodox Jews trying to reconcile their love of Judaism and the divine with biblical prohibitions against homosexuality. Tomboychik is an intimate portrait of DuBowski at 22 and his relationship with his 88-year-old grandmother, whose playful friendship shows a struggle with gender and sexuality across three generations. Following the screening, Ohio State Hillel’s Rabbi Aaron Portman moderated a conversation between DuBowski and film participant Rabbi Steven Greenberg.
Sept. 4 featured Sabbath Queen, DuBowski’s 2024 documentary about Amichai Lau Lavie, an Israeli descended from an unbroken line of 38 rabbis stretching back 1,000 years. The film follows Lau Lavie from his arrival in New York in the late 1990s, when he began using drag to challenge patriarchal orthodoxy, through his decision to become a rabbi and challenge the canon from within. Melton Center Director Hannah Kosstrin moderated a question-and-answer session with DuBowski and Lau Lavie, pictured above.
On Sept. 4, Lau Lavie spoke with Professor Adena Tanenbaum’s Introduction to Jewish Culture, Thought, and Practice course about his work at his New York-based Lab/Shul community and Storahtelling ritual theater company. That evening, he led a “Sabbath Queen” Shabbat at Ohio State Hillel. DuBowski gave a master class in film editing in the Wexner Center Film and Video Theater, focusing on the process for bringing Sabbath Queen to the screen.
Ayelet Tsabari
On Oct. 23, the Melton Center welcomed Israeli Canadian author Ayelet Tsabari for “Songs for the Brokenhearted: A Conversation with Ayelet Tsabari,” a community event in Thompson Library. Tsabari joined Professor Naomi Brenner for a conversation about her novel Songs for the Brokenhearted, followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience. The event gave community members an opportunity to hear Tsabari speak about the family histories, migrations, and silences that shaped the book and about the process of writing a novel rooted in her Yemeni Israeli experience.
Songs for the Brokenhearted follows Zohara, a Yemeni Israeli woman living in New York, who returns to Israel after the death of her mother, Saida, and begins to uncover a secret romance from her mother’s youth. In conversation with Brenner, Tsabari discussed how the novel explores the bond between mothers and daughters, the legacy of migration, and the ways private family secrets can illuminate larger histories.
The next day, Tsabari led “Writing, Belonging, and Diaspora,” a workshop for students in Professor Brenner’s and Professor Ila Nagar’s Citizenship and Diaspora: Living in Between Countries and Cultures course. The workshop focused on identity, writing in a new language, and the search for belonging. Tsabari is the author of The Art of Leaving, The Best
Place on Earth, and Songs for the Brokenhearted, winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. The events were co-sponsored by the Hebrew Language and Literature Fund in the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Culture, the Department of English, and the Middle East Studies Center, and were supported by the Dianne Cummins Community Education Fund.
Tal Feder
On Feb. 10, Tal Feder, postdoctoral fellow at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, gave a lecture titled “Rethinking Cultural Inequality Through the Lens of Arts Justice” that was co-sponsored by the Department of Arts Administration, Education, and Policy (AAEP). Dr. Feder presented a theoretical framework for understanding justice in art and cultural engagement that he terms “arts justice.” He focused on capabilities, availability, and prerequisites for arts consumption in Israel, as well as issues of arts decentralization. Dr. Feder explored how access to the arts, through consumption, creation, and education, is linked to broader social structures. Dr. Feder proposed a holistic model for analyzing how cultural opportunities are shaped, distributed, and experienced (photo, above). After the lecture, Dr. Feder talked with AAEP graduate students about their research.
The Thomas and Diann Mann Symposium
The Thomas and Diann Mann Symposium Fund was established in 1997 by Mr. and Mrs. Mann to support annual symposia in which eminent scholars, along with The Ohio State University faculty, present lectures on a chosen topic in the area of Jewish studies.
Debórah Dwork
On Nov. 12, the Melton Center hosted Debórah Dwork, Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, for a hybrid event held in Professor Robin Judd’s History of the Holocaust class, with students, in-person attendees, and an online audience participating. Dr. Dwork spoke about her recent book, Saints and Liars: The Story of Americans Who Saved Refugees from the Nazis.
The conversation focused on American aid workers who undertook rescue efforts abroad long before the United States entered World War II. Saints and Liars tells the stories of these women and men and examines the moral questions they faced, the devastating decisions they had to make, and the role of unpredictable conditions in shaping individual fates. Dr. Dwork discussed how rescue work unfolded on the ground, where individual choices were constrained by bureaucracy, danger, limited information, and the urgency of people trying to escape Nazi persecution.
Dr. Dwork has long been known for her pathbreaking oral recordings of Holocaust child survivors and for weaving survivor narratives into the histories she writes. Her books include Children With A Star, Flight from the Reich, Auschwitz, and Holocaust. The event was supported by the Thomas and Diann Mann Symposium Fund.
Lenka Lichtenberg
On Feb. 22, the Melton Center partnered with the School of Music to present The Secret Poetess of Terezín, a recital by Canada’s JUNO Award winner Lenka Lichtenberg. Lichtenberg is a vocalist, composer, producer, cantorial singer, and Yiddish singer. Since relocating to Toronto from her native Prague, she has released seven albums and collaborated with other artists. Her music draws on folk, jazz, global roots, and classical genres.
The performance was based on notebooks written by Lichtenberg’s grandmother while she was imprisoned in Theresienstadt from 1942 to 1945. Through songs, storytelling, archival footage, and video, Lichtenberg brought her grandmother’s words into the recital hall. The program featured music from Thieves of Dreams, winner of the 2023 JUNO Award for Global Music Album of the Year, and traced a story of love, loss, hope, and memory under the pressure of the Holocaust.
During her visit, Lichtenberg also presented a program for middle-school students at Columbus Gifted Academy, using music and storytelling to share her grandmother’s story. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer session with students, who asked thoughtful, insightful questions.
The events gave audiences a personal way to encounter Holocaust history through music and family archive. Rather than presenting the notebooks as historical documents, Lichtenberg transformed them into immersive performances that connected voice, poetry, memory, and survival. Her visit was supported by the Dianne Cummins Community Education Fund.
After Lichtenberg’s performance at Columbus Gifted Academy, the school’s staff shared the following student quotes with permission to show Lichtenberg’s impact in our off-campus community:
“I learned a lot from this performance. It really is very interesting to hear about other people’s stories that they are willing to share, and I thought the music was beautiful and powerful.”
“I thought that the idea of turning poems into music is great, and the way she expressed it was beautiful. I also thought it was really impressive how good and strong her voice is.”
“I learned two things from Miss Lenka. The first was the story of a Holocaust survivor and what her life had been like. The second was the beauty of combining different art forms, poetry and song, both great alone and even better together.”
“I think it’s very meaningful that she spent time researching her grandmother’s life and was able to teach others about it. It felt more real to have someone talk about it, and having her grandmother’s poems turned into song made it easier to understand the feelings she had.”
Mann Israel Lecture Series
Since 2014, the Thomas and Diann Mann Lecture Series on Jews, America, and Israel has explored the special and complex relationship between Israel and America. This year’s series featured the following two events:
Oz Frankel
On March 5, the Melton Center hosted Oz Frankel, Professor of History at the New School for Social Research in New York City, for the webinar “Coca Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967 to 1973.” Dr. Frankel appeared in conversation with Ori Yehudai, Associate Professor of History and Schottenstein Chair in Israel Studies. The event was supported by the Thomas and Diann Mann Lecture Series on Jews, America, and Israel.
The webinar was based on Dr. Frankel’s recent book, Coca Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967 to 1973 (Stanford University Press, 2024). In the lecture, Dr. Frankel explored how American discourses of race and ethnicity in the 1960s shaped Israeli society, politics, and culture in the years after the 1967 war. The discussion considered the period from 1967 to 1973 as a moment when Israel’s relationship with the United States was visible not only through diplomacy and military affairs, but also through cultural symbols, protest language, and ideas about identity. Through examples including Coca Cola, the Black Panthers, and Phantom fighter-bomber jets, Dr. Frankel showed how American influence entered Israeli public life in complex and sometimes unexpected ways.
Jonathan Gribetz
On Oct. 28, the Melton Center hosted Jonathan Gribetz, Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Judaic Studies at Princeton University, for two events with students and community members in Professor Ori Yehudai’s classes History of Zionism and Modern Israel and Israel/Palestine: History of the Present. Both programs were supported by the Thomas and Diann Mann Lecture Series on Jews, America, and Israel. Dr. Gribetz is the author of Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist Arab Encounter and Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy.
In the morning session, “A Zionist Arab Conversation in Late Ottoman Jerusalem,” Dr. Gribetz presented material from his work on Eliezer Ben Yehuda’s 1909 report of his interview with Muhammad Ruhi al Khalidi, published in Ben Yehuda’s Hebrew newspaper Ha Zvi. Students and community members looked closely at how the conversation appeared in the newspaper, what topics were included, and what the published exchange suggests about the possible motivations of both Ben Yehuda and al Khalidi. Dr. Gribetz asked participants to think about what can and cannot be learned from a newspaper account: what the text says directly, what it leaves unresolved, and how historians reconstruct a conversation from a source shaped by its language, audience, and publication context. During the session’s question-and-answer portion, participants asked about the challenges of interpreting this kind of historical document and what it reveals about early Zionist-Arab conversations in late Ottoman Jerusalem.
Later that day, Dr. Gribetz led a class session on Reading Herzl in Beirut, his book about the PLO Research Center and its efforts to study Judaism, Zionism, and Israel. He discussed the history of the center, the removal of its library from Beirut in 1982, and its return in 1983 as part of a prisoner exchange. The conversation focused on what was in the collection, why Palestinian researchers gathered books and materials about Jews, Zionism, and Israel, and how those materials shaped the center’s effort to understand Israel. The afternoon session also included discussion and a question-and-answer session with students and community members.
The 34th Annual Pearl and Troy Feibel Lecture on Judaism and Law
The Pearl and Troy Feibel Lecture on Judaism and Law was established in 1988 by Pearl Feibel with support from Barbara Feibel Robins, James Feibel (z”l), Donald Feibel (z”l), and Robert Shamansky (z”l).
On March 29, the Melton Center presented the 34th annual Pearl and Troy Feibel Lecture on Judaism and Law at the Columbus JCC featuring Robert Katz, Professor of Law and John S. Grimes Fellow at Indiana University McKinney School of Law. Before the public lecture, Professor Katz joined members of the Feibel family and several Ohio State faculty for dinner, continuing the personal and scholarly connections that have shaped the lecture series since its founding.
Professor Katz presented “American Law’s Jewish Question: Religion, Race, and Free Speech in an Age of Campus Antisemitism.” His lecture examined the ways American law has struggled to categorize Jews within its major frameworks, including religion, race, ethnicity, and free speech. He discussed constitutional protections, civil rights approaches to anti-Jewish harm, and contemporary campus debates about antisemitic expression.
Drawing on recent campus controversies nationwide, Katz asked whether American law can better address Jewish identity as an ethnoreligious tradition and protect religious and secular Jews alike. Katz recently published Antisemitism and the Law and is the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Antisemitism. After the lecture, Katz took questions from the audience in a discussion that extended the evening’s focus on law, Jewish identity, and campus antisemitism. The event concluded with a dessert reception.
Jewish Studies Grad-Faculty Mixer
On March 10, the Melton Center hosted a mixer for graduate students in Jewish studies to network with each other and with Melton Center faculty. The students who attended are pursuing master’s and doctoral degree programs focused on Jewish studies topics in the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of Classics, Department of Theatre, Film and Media Arts, School of Music, and the Slavic Center, showing the interdisciplinary reach of Jewish studies at Ohio State.
Writer in Residence Work in Progress Reading
The Melton Center was pleased to host Writer-in-Residence Lucia Mann for a third year. During the first two years of her residency, Mann completed a novella called Jan Knopp that explores a major antisemitism scandal in the German feuilleton. This year, Mann gave a reading of her second novel in progress, which explores an American professor’s response to protests and antisemitism on campus.
Lucia Mann is a screenwriter, playwright, and novelist from Berlin. She has written two feature films for the Herzkino series (ZDF) and a romantic comedy that broke new ground in contemporary German media by featuring a female Jewish protagonist. Her play The Astronaut debuted in New York in 2023; it featured the Grimme-Preis-winning actor August Zirner and was co-directed by Arnon Grunberg (Blue Mondays, Tirza, The Jewish Messiah). Born and raised in Berlin, Lucia also has close ties to the Lubuskie Lato Filmowe Film Festival in Poland and has lived in Israel, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom.
Jewish Studies Grad-Faculty Mixer
On March 10, the Melton Center hosted a mixer for graduate students in Jewish studies to network with each other and with Melton Center faculty. The students who attended are pursuing master’s and doctoral degree programs focused on Jewish studies topics in the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of Classics, Department of Theatre, Film and Media Arts, School of Music, and the Slavic Center, showing the interdisciplinary reach of Jewish studies at Ohio State.
Writer in Residence Work in Progress Reading
The Melton Center was pleased to host Writer-in-Residence Lucia Mann for a third year. During the first two years of her residency, Mann completed a novella called Jan Knopp that explores a major antisemitism scandal in the German feuilleton. This year, Mann gave a reading of her second novel in progress, which explores an American professor’s response to protests and antisemitism on campus.
Lucia Mann is a screenwriter, playwright, and novelist from Berlin. She has written two feature films for the Herzkino series (ZDF) and a romantic comedy that broke new ground in contemporary German media by featuring a female Jewish protagonist. Her play The Astronaut debuted in New York in 2023; it featured the Grimme-Preis-winning actor August Zirner and was co-directed by Arnon Grunberg (Blue Mondays, Tirza, The Jewish Messiah). Born and raised in Berlin, Lucia also has close ties to the Lubuskie Lato Filmowe Film Festival in Poland and has lived in Israel, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom.
Rebecca Rossen
On March 26, the Melton Center and Department of Dance welcomed Professor Rebecca Rossen, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, for the Zoom lecture “Spectacular Suffering: Holocaust Representation in Competition Dance.” Professor Rossen discussed how dance has played a key, yet often unacknowledged, role in conveying memories of the Holocaust in ways both aligned with and distinct from other art forms. Over the last sixty years, she explained, choreographers have grappled with the Holocaust and its continuing resonance through bodily expression across genres including concert dance, dance on film, and site-specific performance.
Professor Rossen focused on a more recent trend: Holocaust-themed routines performed on major dance competition platforms such as Dance Moms, So You Think You Can Dance, and Russia’s Ice Age, as well as youth competition circuits throughout the United States and Canada. Recycling iconography from popular Holocaust literature and film, these formulaic routines, she argued, often universalize the Holocaust for mass audiences and spectacularize victimhood to increase competitors’ chances of winning. At the same time, Rossen noted that distinct national contexts and global circulation complicate both the reception and the potential impact of such performances.
Melton Center Director Hannah Kosstrin moderated a question-and-answer session with Professor Rossen following her talk.
Levyosn’s Dream: A Yiddish Concert
Led by Adah Hetko, the Boston-based Yiddish band Levyosn performed in Crane Café in Hagerty Hall on March 30 with music from their recent album Levyosn’s Dream. Specializing in Yiddish song and klezmer, Levyosn takes its name from the Ashkenazi Hebrew word for the leviathan, a mythical sea creature.
Playing original songs alongside historical repertoire, the four-piece band, consisting of Lysander Jaffe (violin and voice), Raffi Boden (cello), Lexi Ugelow (piano, voice, guitar), and Hetko (guitar and voice), filled the lunchtime hour with warmth, humor, and Yiddish music. While introducing the songs, band members provided historical context about Yiddishkeit, discussed musical influences, and shared English translations of the lyrics.
Topics included a socialist Yiddish tribute to fruit, a love song to borscht, a socialist call to action about class struggle, a story about a sukkah, changing seasons of the heart, and the blossoming of spring. Assistant Professor of Yiddish Saul Zaritt led a question-and-answer session following the performance about the band’s creative process, approach, source material, Yiddish practice, and musical backgrounds.
The Melton Center co-sponsored the program with the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures in conjunction with Professor Zaritt’s Yiddish Short Story course.
Kierra Crago-Schneider
On April 7, the Melton Center hosted Dr. Kierra Crago-Schneider, Campus Outreach Program Officer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for events supported by the Norbert and Gretel B. Bloch Endowed Scholarship Fund in Jewish Studies. Bloch Scholarship recipient Brenna Miller, a PhD student in the School of Music, organized the program. Miller’s previous work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Summer Graduate Fellow led to her collaboration with Dr. Crago-Schneider on presentations addressing the postwar realities faced by Jewish Holocaust survivors.
Dr. Crago-Schneider’s research focuses on relationships among Holocaust survivors living in Jewish displaced persons centers in Germany, American occupiers, international aid workers, and Germans between 1945 and 1957. Her work examines the conditions, interactions, and continued antisemitism encountered by Jewish survivors after liberation.
In her public lecture, “After the Holocaust: The Story of Jewish Displaced Persons,” Dr. Crago-Schneider explored the complex realities facing Jewish survivors in the years immediately following liberation, particularly between 1945 and 1948, before immigration opportunities became available for many survivors. She introduced audiences to life in displaced persons camps in West Germany and discussed how survivors navigated continued antisemitism, Allied administration, and delayed resettlement while making sense of their Holocaust experiences.
She also examined how theater, music, and other forms of artistic expression enabled Jewish displaced persons to reclaim identity, process trauma, and shape how they represented themselves to one another and to the wider world.
In addition to the public lecture, Dr. Crago-Schneider participated in a roundtable discussion with students in Professor Kevin Richards’s Holocaust in German Literature and Film course. Across both events, the program reached more than 300 students, deepening understanding of Jewish experiences in the years immediately following the Holocaust.
Ohio Jewish Studies Workshop
On April 26, the Melton Center and the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures co-hosted the second annual Ohio Jewish Studies Workshop for Jewish studies faculty from across the state. The workshop provided opportunities for research exchange, professional networking, and discussion of current issues facing Jewish studies in Ohio.
Supported by the Herbert and Betty Shiff Fund for Jewish Studies and the Hebrew Language and Literature Support Fund, the day featured a New Research in Jewish Studies panel followed by breakout discussions on topics including teaching Jewish studies, federal, state, and local pressures, professional development, and living and working in Ohio. The workshop concluded with a roundtable focused on the current state of Jewish studies in Ohio.
Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire
On Nov. 9, the Melton Center sponsored a Kristallnacht commemoration screening of Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire at JCC Columbus as part of the Columbus Jewish Film Festival. Directed by Oren Rudavsky, the 2024 documentary offers an intimate portrait of Elie Wiesel, one of the most influential survivor witnesses of the Holocaust and author of Night (1956).
Drawing on family materials and personal archives, the film explores Wiesel’s passions, struggles, and enduring impact as a writer, teacher, and advocate for human rights. Told largely through Wiesel’s own words and featuring original interviews and hand-painted animation, the documentary examines both the familiar and lesser-known dimensions of his life and legacy.
The screening considered Wiesel’s significance at a moment when Holocaust memory is receding from living experience and authoritarian threats remain pressing concerns. The event was co-sponsored by the Columbus Jewish Film Festival and supported by the Diane Cummins Community Education Fund in Jewish Studies.
Magicians, Sages, and Poets: A Symposium in Honor of Michael Swartz
On March 12, the Melton Center co-sponsored Magicians, Sages, and Poets: A Symposium in Honor of Michael Swartz, a daylong event celebrating the career and scholarship of Professor Michael D. Swartz upon his retirement.
The symposium brought together scholars from Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, Classics, and related fields. Guest speakers included Ra’anan Boustan (Yale University), Krista Dalton (Kenyon College), Laura Lieber (University of Regensburg), Stuart Miller (University of Connecticut), Annette Yoshiko Reed (Harvard University), Laurence H. Schiffman (New York University), and Sarah Iles Johnston (The Ohio State University), along with additional Ohio State faculty.
Through presentations and discussion, participants reflected on Professor Swartz’s contributions to the study of ancient religion, rabbinic literature, ritual, magic, poetry, and Jewish textual traditions. The event served as a scholarly tribute to a career that has influenced multiple academic fields and intellectual communities.
Synagogues, Scrolls, and the Divine Voice
On March 31, the Melton Center co-sponsored a lecture by William Schniedewind, Professor of Biblical Studies and Northwest Semitic Languages and Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies at UCLA.
Based on his forthcoming book Synagogues, Scrolls, and the Divine Voice, Dr. Schniedewind examined the transformation of the word of G-d from spoken revelation to sacred text. He discussed how divine speech in ancient Israel was first encountered through prophets, communal gatherings, and oral traditions before becoming embodied in written scrolls and synagogue practice.
Drawing on research in biblical studies, Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship, ancient languages, inscriptions, literature, and archaeology, the lecture explored how sacred texts came to function as vessels of divine presence and authority.
Whose Terms? The Politics of Ethnographic Knowledge-Making with Syrian Jewish Mexicans
On April 14, the Melton Center co-sponsored a lecture by Evelyn María Dean-Olmsted, an anthropologist and applied researcher based in Miami, titled “Whose Terms? The Politics of Ethnographic Knowledge-Making with Syrian Jewish Mexicans.”
Dean-Olmsted, author of Coming of Age as Syrian Jewish Mexicans: The Pragmatics of Diaspora, discussed the research and writing process behind her linguistic ethnography of Syrian Jewish life in Mexico City. Her talk explored how young adults use language to construct identities at the intersection of Jewish, Arab, and Mexican belonging.
She reflected on moments when scholarly categories did not align with community members’ own understandings, including the use of “Arab” as an identity label and relajo as a form of ethnic joking. The lecture highlighted questions of naming, translation, and representation in ethnographic research.
Earlier that day, she also met with students in Professor Galey Modan’s graduate folklore seminar, Fieldwork and the Ethnography of Communication.
The Legacy of Winemaking in the Middle East
On Sept. 18, the Melton Center co-sponsored “The Legacy of Winemaking in the Middle East,” a lecture by Middle East food culture educator Barbara Petzen. A leading expert on Middle Eastern foodways, Petzen has spent three decades working as an educator in both the Middle East and the United States and currently serves as a consultant for the Seeds of Middle Eastern Culture project.
Her lecture explored the ancient and evolving traditions of winemaking across the Middle East and how these practices have shaped cultural, religious, and economic life over thousands of years. The program formed part of the Middle East Studies Center’s Seeds of Middle Eastern Culture initiative and was supported by Ohio State’s Office of Outreach and Engagement.
Multi-ethnic Cultural Reproductions in the Middle East
The 2025–2026 academic year marked the launch of the two-year project Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Multi-ethnic Cultural Reproductions in the Middle East (MCRME), a collaboration among the Melton Center for Jewish Studies, the Middle East Studies Center (MESC), and the Center for Ethics and Human Values (CEHV), supported by Ohio State’s Global Arts and Humanities Cross-Disciplinary Research Exchange.
Co-led by Hannah Kosstrin, Joy McCorriston, and Aaron Yarmel, along with faculty collaborators Yiğit Akin, Naomi Brenner, Johanna Sellman, and Ori Yehudai, the project engages historical and contemporary questions about power and minoritized communities in the Middle East, with particular attention to Israel and Palestine.
Program goals include fostering interdisciplinary scholarship, creating opportunities for dialogue across differing perspectives, engaging campus audiences through artistic and cultural programming, and producing collaborative research and creative work.
Highlights included four campus-wide “Talking About the Middle East” dialogues, the residency of Ethiopian-Israeli artist Dege Feder, and a lecture by Aidah Aljuran on language, religion, and gender among the Isma'ili community of Saudi Arabia.
The Inner and the Outer: Jewish Lives in the Early Modern Period
On May 3–4, the Melton Center, with support from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Samuel M. and Esther Melton Chair in the Department of History, hosted The Inner and the Outer: Jewish Lives in the Early Modern Period.
Chaired by Matt Goldish (Ohio State) and David Sclar (Princeton University/Frisch School), the conference brought together scholars of early modern Jewish history from the United States, Europe, and Israel for presentations and discussions examining the social, intellectual, and spiritual worlds of Jewish communities during the early modern era.
Using the theme of inner existence and its tensions between concealment and revelation, participants explored theology, religious practice, communal life, Kabbalah, Hasidism, ethical literature, rabbinic controversies, and changing forms of Jewish identity. The conference highlighted how individuals and communities understood themselves in relation to familial, religious, and political structures while navigating periods of significant social change.