Aviva Ben-Ur

Lecture: “Identity Imperative: Ottoman Jews and the Quest for Citizenship in Interwar England”

 Wednesday December 4, 7 pm, Ringsmuth Auditorium

Aviva Ben-Ur is Associate Professor in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Adjunct to both the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Department of History. She earned her Ph.D. from Brandeis University (1998) and her M.A. and M.Phil. degrees from Columbia University (1992; 1994). She is the author, with Rachel Frankel, of Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries and Synagogues of Suriname (Hebrew Union College Press, forthcoming), and A Ladino Legacy: The Judeo-Spanish Collection of Louis N. Levy (Alexander Books, 2001). Her current book projects include Sephardic Jews in the United States: Where Diasporas Met (under contract with New York University Press) and “Jewish Identity in a Slave Society: Suriname, 1660-1863,” for which she has been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship. Her articles and reviews have appeared in journals such as Journal of Southern History, American Jewish History, American Jewish Archives, Jewish History, Journal of Jewish Studies, and Studies in Bibliography and Booklore.

Personal Narrative: One Family’s History

Wednesday October 30, 7 pm, Ringsmuth Auditorium

Elizabeth Valencia-Borgert, adjunct professor of Languages & Cultures at SCSU, will present her personal story of how she discovered her Sephardic roots.

Elizabeth Valencia-Borgert is originally from Valencia, Venezuela.  Her family story is originally based on what she heard from the abuelos while growing up in Venezuela.  One of her brothers did more recent research, engaged in a search for the story of  their family’s Sephardic ancestry. It is the family’s wish to record oral histories as well as examine the historical roots of their Jewish ancestors.

Elizabeth is Spanish faculty in the Languages and Cultures Department at St. Cloud State University, and has been a St. Cloud resident for over 20 years.  She is an active member of the local Latino community, and part of one of the taskforces for the St. Cloud Community Priorities Initiatives.

Lecture: Bad Blood: Old Christians, Jews, and Conversos in the Spanish Extremadura

Dr. Roger Martinez, history professor and Director of the Sephardic and Crypto-Jewish Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, will present “Bad Blood: Old Christians, Jews, and Conversos in the Spanish Extremadura” on Thursday October 24th at 7 pm in Ringsmuth Auditorium.

Since Fall 2010, Dr. Martínez has served as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. From fall 2008 – spring 2010, he served as the Burton Postdoctoral Fellow at St. Joseph’s University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and earned his Ph.D. in May 2008 from the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Martínez specializes in the study of medieval and early modern Spain, religious minorities and religious converts in Spain (in particular, Jews and conversos), and Spanish trans-Atlantic migration to Mexico and Bolivia.

Currently, Dr. Martínez serves as the First Vice President of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies, an organization that fosters the research of the historical and contemporary development of crypto–Jews of Iberian origin.  His forthcoming text, Blood, Faith, and Fate: Jews, Conversos, and Old Christian in Early Modern Spain and Colonial Spanish America, is under contract with a university press. He has published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Crypto-Jews and reviewed books for The Sixteenth Century Journal and The Americas.

Dr. Martínez is a native of San Antonio, Texas. He has resided in South America, Spain, and both the west and east coasts of the United States. During his formative years he lived in Caracas, Venezuela, and La Paz, Bolivia.

Lecture: Traditionalism in Sephardic Art

Wednesday October 16, 7 pm, Ringsmuth Auditorium

[Book signing to be held after the lecture]

Dr. Vivian Mann is director of the Master’s Program in Jewish Art and Visual Culture at The Jewish Theological Seminary. For many years, Dr. Mann was Morris and Eva Feld Chair of Judaica at The Jewish Museum, where she created numerous exhibitions and their catalogs Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy; Convivencia: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Spain; and, most recently, Morocco: Jews and Art in a Muslim Land. She is the author of Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts (2000, Cambridge University Press) and Art and Ceremony in Jewish Life: Essays in the History of Jewish Art (2005, Pindar Press). In 2010, Dr. Mann curated the exhibition Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians and Altarpieces in Medieval Spain at the Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA), and helped produce the accompanying catalog.

In 1999, Dr. Mann was awarded the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in Jewish Thought by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture for her successful efforts at establishing a new field of Jewish studies (Jewish art) and the Master’s Program in Jewish Art and Visual Culture at JTS. Dr. Mann is a founding editor of Images: A Journal in Jewish Art and Visual Culture, the first American journal in the field.

 

 

 

Movie: Every Time We Say Goodbye

  Thursday October 3rd, 7 pm, Miller Center Library: Ringsmuth Auditorium

Every Time We Say Goodbye (1986) Poster

 

Starring Tom Hanks. An American soldier falls in love with a beautiful Ladino-speaking girl in British occupied Jerusalem during World War Two.

A discussion session will follow the film.

For more information about the film, click here.

For more information about the Ladino-speaking community, click here.

Lecture: “Sephardic Jews: Identity Formation Among Pied-Noirs and Natives”

Wednesday October 2nd, 3:30-4:30 pm

   Ringsmuth Auditorium

Dr. Sandrine Zerbib is a French sociologist, born in Paris where her parents met after living Algeria as French expatriates.  Dr. Zerbib holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology from the University of California Irvine and a Masters in Sociology from both California State University-Fullerton and University of Paris 10-Nanterre (France).  Dr. Zerbib’s ongoing research focuses on issues of immigration, sexuality and citizenship. Dr. Zerbib’s current research analyzes the effect of domestic partnership and marriage laws on gay bi-national couples living in France.  She is currently collaborating with Dr. Finan on research with immigrant women farmers and gardeners. She teaches courses in Research Methods, Sociology of Gender, Sociology of Women and Work, Immigration and Citizenship, and Advanced Research Methods.

Lecture: “Sephardim and the Holocaust”

Thursday September 26, 7 pm, Ringsmuth Auditorium

Alejandro Baer is a Sociology Professor and Director for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota.  He conducts research on the representation of present and past mass violence in a global arena of interconnected memory cultures, particularly in the cases of Spain, Argentina, and the Holocaust. He has lived in Germany, Spain, and California.

For Dr. Baer’s website and CV, click here.

Sephardim: Jews of Spain: 1492 and Beyond Welcome Center Event

Sephardim, The Jews of Spain: 1492 and Beyond

Who are the Sephardim?

Join us for the kick-off of our event series to find out.

Exhibits, films, and refreshments will be served.

Mon Sept 16: SCSU Welcome Center: 5 pm – 7 pm — All are welcome!

For the complete list of events, see our brochure.