EAJS Virtual 2024: Jewish Literatures, Places, and Heritage. Online conference co-organized by the CEU Jewish Studies Program and the Association for the Study of German-Jewish Culture, Rome

Date for Virtual Conference: 21 November 2024
Audience Registration Deadline: 7 November 2024

Jewish literature, heritage sites, and cultural landmarks form intricate topographical networks across urban and rural landscapes. Since the mid-1990s, the promotion of Jewish heritage—synagogues, museums, ghetto areas, and Shoah memorials—has significantly shaped the economic and cultural landscapes of European cities. Alongside these developments, there has been a growing interest in sites linked to Jewish literary creativity, fostering new forms of cultural pilgrimage. Places associated with Jewish authors and the settings in their works have become focal points in travel experiences, highlighting the rich interplay between literature and physical space.

This virtual conference will explore multiple dimensions of Jewish Literatures, Places, and Heritage, from macro-level analyses of trans-regional Jewish networks to micro-level studies of specific locations such as Jewish residential areas. Jewish topographies, tourism phenomena, and policies will also be examined to understand their role in shaping Jewish literary memory and heritage. The conference aims to open dialogue on both symbolic and physical spaces—religious, historical, and literary—and how these have been represented, studied, and conveyed through time, as well as their current and future developments.

The event will feature a keynote by Ruth Ellen Gruber and will bring together a range of perspectives on religious and secular spaces, exploring synchronous and diachronic approaches. Panels will delve into unexpected forms of heritage, historical entanglements of spaces and places in Jewish American Literature, and into the nostalgic and utopic places in European Jewish Literature. By drawing on literary, cultural, and historical insights, this conference provides a platform for scholars to collaborate, develop innovative research, and generate new approaches to understanding the interconnections between Jewish literature, places, and heritage.

EAJS members who would like to attend as part of the audience (i.e. as non-speakers) have until 7 November to register using the Online Registration Form (attendance is free for members).