The Thomas and Diann Mann Symposium Fund was established in 1997 to support annual symposia in The Ohio State University’s College of Humanities, in which eminent scholars, along with Ohio State University faculty, present lectures on a chosen topic around Jewish studies. Since the College of Humanities merged with other colleges to form Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences in 2010, the annual Mann Symposium has supported Jewish inquiry across the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

 

2026 - Saints and Liars: The Story of Americans Who Saved Refugees from the Nazis

Debórah Dwork, Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, presented a lecture on November 12, 2025. Drawing on her recent book Saints and Liars: The Story of Americans Who Saved Refugees from the Nazis, Dwork examined the efforts of American aid workers who rescued refugees before the United States entered World War II. Dwork discussed the moral dilemmas, bureaucratic obstacles, and difficult decisions faced by those involved in rescue efforts, highlighting how individual lives were shaped by circumstance, limited information, and the urgency of escaping Nazi persecution. The hybrid event was hosted in Professor Robin Judd’s History of the Holocaust course and brought together students, in-person attendees, and an online audience.

 

2025 - Jewish Migrations and Cultural Production

The 2024–2025 Thomas and Diann Mann Symposium on Jewish Migrations and Cultural Production highlighted the ways that Jewish cultural production reflects routes and roots of Jewish migrations.

-Ari Ariel, Jewish Cooking Around the World and Yemeni Jewish Homelands: Ari Ariel, Associate Professor of Instruction in History and International Studies at the University of Iowa, presented two programs on February 3 and 4, 2025. He led a cooking demonstration featuring Jewish foods from around the world, including caponata, shakshuka, and cheese latkes, while discussing their migration histories. He also delivered a lecture on Yemeni Jewish migration to Palestine and Israel and explored how food, music, and dance help diasporic communities negotiate questions of identity, belonging, and cultural continuity.

-Renana Gutman, Unheard Melodies: Renana Gutman, pianist and faculty member at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, presented Unheard Melodies on February 17 and 18, 2025. The program featured works by Jewish composers whose lives and careers were shaped by the upheavals of the period surrounding the two World Wars and whose music reflected journeys across Europe and Palestine. In addition to public performances at Wexner Heritage Village and Ohio State’s Timashev Recital Hall, Gutman led a piano master class for School of Music students.

 

2024 - Humor and Laughter in Religion Symposium

The Center for the Study of Religion and the Melton Center presented the Humor and Laughter in Religion Symposium on February 9, 2024. The program examined what humor reveals about the ways religious communities negotiate boundaries of identity and belonging. The symposium was introduced by Isaac Weiner, director of the Center for the Study of Religion, who emphasized the value of cross-cultural and comparative approaches to the study of religion.

-Jennifer Caplan, associate professor and chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Cincinnati, spoke on “What’s Jewish about Jewish Humor?” An expert on American religion and popular culture, Caplan is the author of Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism in Humor from the Silent Generation to the Millennials (Wayne State University Press, 2023). Her presentation explored the distinctive characteristics of Jewish humor and its role in shaping Jewish identity and culture.

-Samah Choudhury, assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ithaca College, presented “Thinking about Religion and Race by Taking Humor Seriously.” Choudhury, whose scholarship focuses on religion, race, popular culture, and Islam, discussed how humor serves as a lens for understanding contemporary religious and racial dynamics. Her work draws on themes from her book American Muslim Humor and the Politics of Secularity.

-Hannibal Hamlin, professor of English and associate director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Ohio State, delivered the lecture “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost Walk into a Bar... Does Christianity Have a Sense of Humor?” An expert in early modern English literature, Hamlin explored the role of humor within Christian traditions and religious thought.
 

2023 - Comix and Comics: Humor and Laughter in Religion Symposium; Superman’s “Jewish Origins” and

-Samantha Baskind, Distinguished Professor of Art History from Cleveland State University, who presented two programs. She spoke to students in Professor Robin Judd’s Holocaust class about the Warsaw Ghetto in American art and culture, and she gave a public lecture about the influence Jews have had on comics since the 1930s

 

2022 - Yamma Ensemble

-Yamma Ensemble, Israel’s leading world music ensemble. Yamma’s repertoire included musical traditions drawn from the various Jewish diasporas: songs tracing to historical Jewish communities from Yemen, Babylon and Sepharad, as well as Hasidic music, with the intricately unfolding forms and rhythms that have been preserved by generations of Jewish traditions. They performed original contemporary Hebrew music at the Jewish Community Center on September 18, 2022 to a full house.

 

2021- Adjudicating Belonging Across the Mediterranean: Sephardi Jews between Italy and Tunisia

-Jessica Marglin, Associate Professor of Religion, Law, and History and Ruth Ziegler Early Career Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Southern California, presented a lecture on November 1, 2021. Using the inheritance dispute surrounding the estate of Nissim Shamama, a wealthy Tunisian Jew who died in Livorno, Italy, she examined how questions of nationality, citizenship, and Jewish belonging were negotiated across the Mediterranean in the nineteenth century.

-Yuval Evri and Evelyne Oliel-Grausz: A second symposium session featured Yuval Evri, Assistant Professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Marash and Ocuin Chair in Ottoman, Mizrahi, and Sephardic Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, and Evelyne Oliel-Grausz, Associate Professor of Early Modern and Modern Jewish History at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. Their presentations addressed topics in Sephardic and Mediterranean Jewish history.

 

2020 - A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture

Shachar Pinsker, Professor of Hebrew Literature and Culture at the University of Michigan discussed how Jewish modernity was born in the café, nourished, and sent out into the world by way of print, politics, literature, art, and theater based on his recent book. The program was held at a coffee shop near campus. 

 

2019 - “Below the Line”? The Feuilleton and Modern Jewish Cultures

This conference focused on nineteenth and twentieth century  Jewish writers, philosophers, political thinkers and poets who wrote feuilltons (European magazines with articles, poems, and short novels). The conference focused on the Jewishness of the feuilleton that engage issues related to Jewish identity or the Jewishness of form. 

 

2018 - Metaphors of Time: An Interdisciplinary Conversation Across the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences

A two-day conference of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural conversations with presenters from different disciplines. Topics included particle physics, Zen Buddhism, contemporary dance, the Ohio Earthworks, coral reefs, mosquito circadian rhythms, and a Palestinian film.

 

2017 - Jewish Dance Symposium. Scholars and practitioners of Jewish and Israeli dance participated in workshops on Jewish dance as part of the International Dance Conference held at Ohio State.

 

2015-2016 - American Judaism: The Last 50 Years and Beyond

 A year-long series of education programs about some of the major movements, shifts, and ideas driving American Judaism over the past half-century and how Jewish life has been shaped in the recent past and where things might be headed in the future.

-The first program was a day-long series of panel discussions featuring Rabbi Laura Geller, Richard Siegel, Shaul Magid (Indiana University), Riv-Ellen Prell (University of Minnesota), Or Mars (Wexner Foundation), and Pamela Nadell (American University). Topics included spirituality, women rabbis, Judaism at home, the renewal movement of the 1970’s, and the future of Jewish institutions.

-The second program in the series featured Arnold Eisen, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, who spoke on the Conservative moveme

-The final programs in the series focused on Chasidism, and a new wave of “liberal orthodox” rabbis.

 

2015 - China and the Jews
One day conference featuring an international group of scholars explored aspects of the relationship between Jews and China in modernity. Speakers: Noam Urbach, Bar-Ilan University, Moshe Bernstein, University of Western Australia, Jonathan Goldstein, University of West Georgia, Bei Gao, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, Rabbi Anson Laytner, Seattle University

2014 - Children of Abraham and Sarah: Conversion and Judaism

This three-part series approached the topic of conversion from various angles. Our partners for the series, Ohio State Hillel, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, the Jewish Studies Student Association, the Jewish Federation of Columbus-Atid Division, Congregation Tifereth Israel and Congregation Agudas Achim, hosted four events over the weekend of Oct. 25-27 - 

-Rabbi Andrea Myers, "The Choosing: A Rabbi’s Journey from Silent Nights to High Holy Days."

-Shaye Cohen, Harvard University, Sylvia Barack Fishman, Brandeis University, “Nature and Nurture: Is Jewishness in our Genes?”

-Tamar Rudavsky, OSU, "Was Maimonides a Convert?"

 

2013 - Spinoza: The ‘God-Intoxicated Atheist?’”

Professor Steven Nadler (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Why Was Spinoza Excommunicated?”, and Professor Jacob Adler (University of Arkansas), and Michael Le Buffe (Texas A&M) also delivered papers at the conference.

 

2011 - al-Ghazali and the Jews conference

Talks on al-Ghazali’s impact on Maimonides and other Jewish thinkers were presented by leading scholars of Jewish philosophy from Israel and the United States.

The same year, Melton Center and OSU’s Department of Dance hosted the Modern Jewish Experience through the Lens of Dance conference, the first conference of its kind in the United States. Scholars and practitioners from across the US and Israel delivered paper presentations, workshops, and performances. 

 

2009/2010 - Israel and Its Neighbors, a series designed to offer a deeper understanding of the myriad issues affecting Israel and its relationship with its Arab neighbors. 

-Menachem Kellner, Professor, Jewish Thought, University of Haifa, "Is There a New Anti-Semitism?"

-Jonathan Cohen, Professor, Communications, University of Haifa, "“Shaping of the Media in a Global Context.” 

-Avi Becker, Goldman Visiting Professor, Georgetown University, "Chosenness and its impact on the Middle East Crisis.

-Dov Waxman, Professor of Political Science, Baruch College, "Can Israel End the Occupation?” 

 

Ancient Ornamentalism conference on how Jews, Christians, and members of other Middle Eastern relgions in antiquity interacted as they composed prayers and poetry of their faiths.

 

2008 - Jewish and Christian Mystical and Messianic Movements in their Social and Religious Contexts: The Eastern European Case

This conference focused encounter between Jewish and Christian mystics in Eastern Europe, the impact of the Eastern European context on Jewish mystics who remained within the Jewish fold, and border transgressions among Jewish and Christian mystics alike.

Participants: Professors Sergei Zhuk (Ohio State); Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern (Northwestern University); Glenn Dynner (Sarah Lawrence College); Chaim Hames (Ben Gurion University of the Negev); Harris Lenowitz (University of Utah); Moshe Idel (Hebrew University; James Lenaghan (Ohio State); Nicholas Breyfogle (Ohio State); Pawel Maciejko (Hebrew University); Hanna Wegrzynek (University of Warsaw); Paul Radensky (University of Utah); Mircea Platon (Ohio State); Matt Goldish (Ohio State); Dr. Marsha Keith Schuchard.

 

2007 - Jewish Cities

2006- Yiddish Culture in Transition

2004-2005 - The Legacy of Maimonides, 1204-2004, a one-day conference at OSU Hillel. 

 

2003/2004 -  Beyond the People of the Book

Lecture by Professor Andrew Gow, University of Alberta, Canada, "Real and Imaginary Jews in Maps." 

 

2002/2003 - Resetting the Margins of Jewish Folklore

2001/2002 -  Jewish Music, East and West

2000/2001 -  One Thousand Years of German-Jewry: Assimilation and Dissimilation

1999/2000  - Artifacts of Memory

1998/1999  - The Image and the Word 

1997/1998 - Science, Religion and Judaism