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.