Sephardi Modernities Seminar Series
Organized by Angy Cohen (Spanish National Research Council) and Yuval Evri (Brandeis University), this annual lecture series presents different experiences of Sephardi modernization across place and time.
The seminars will take place 12:30-2 pm (Eastern Time) on Zoom
Diasporas: Sephardi Perspectives
Sephardi Modernities Seminar Series 2026
This seminar series explores the concept of diaspora as a lens for understanding the modern and contemporary Sephardi world. By engaging with the histories and experiences of Sephardi communities across imperial, colonial, and post-colonial landscapes, the series examines questions of multiple belongings, identity formation, and cultural transmission. It addresses the diversity of modern Sephardi Jewish experiences by considering diaspora as shaped by histories of migration and return, continuity and rupture, belonging and exclusion.
Through theoretical and historical reflections alongside ethnographic research, our guest speakers will discuss how modern and contemporary Sephardi subjects have grappled with their position between centers and peripheries, often redefining notions of home, tradition, and modernity.
Programme
February 11th, 2025
The Colonized Outsiders: Reflections on Fanon, Memmi and North African Jews
Gabriel Abensour (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Leftist Arabised Jews, Arab Nationalism and the Question of Individual and Collective Rights
Moshe Behar (University of Manchester)
Photo of Djerba Ghriba synagogue in Tunisia by Tico on Wikipedia
March 6th, 2025
The Other Iraqi Feminism: Three Silenced Leftist Heroines, 1941-1979
Orit Bashkin (University of Chicago)
Transnationalism and Nationalism: Jewish Communists and the Development of the Egyptian Left, 1920-1965
Rami Ginat (Bar-Ilan University)
Photo of Ben Ezra Synagogue, Cairo, Egypt by Faris Knight on Wikimedia (CC-SA-3.0)
April 3rd, 2025
Weaving Transnational Threads: Mizrahi Feminist Thought and Organizing at This Global Political Moment
Yali Hashash (Isha L'Isha Haifa Feminist Research Center) and Shirly Bahar (Columbia University)
In the face of global and regional reactionary institutions attempting to set apart traditions of Mizrahi organizing from co-opted, distorted versions of "Mizrahi culture," Hashash and Bahar explore generative practices of understanding and using Mizrahi feminist and queer thought and cultural legacies for current left global fights for justice and freedom for all.
Illustration by Neta Elkayam
April 24th, 2025
Navigating Bourgeois Status, Socialism, and Nationalism: Comparing Armenian and Jewish 'Repatriations' From Egypt
Aviad Moreno (Ben Gurion University of the Negev) and Ani Avetisyan (University of Cambridge)
Façade the synagogue of Moses ben-Maimon in Cairo before its renovation in 2010, photo by Roland Unger (CC-BY-3.0)
May 8th, 2025
Sephardic Public Figures in the Argentine and Brazilian Left: Revisiting an Entangled History
Silvina Schammah Gesser (Salti Institute, Bar-Ilan University, and Truman Institute, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Michel Gherman (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)
Photo: Cover of Der Avangard, August 1908 issue published by Yidishe sotsyal-demokratishe arbeyter organisatsyon in argentina (avangard), a Jewish socialist organization in Argentina
Sponsored by
Spanish National Research Center and the Institute of Mediterranean Languages and Cultures
Supported by
Belzberg Program in Israel Studies, University of Calgary
In collaboration with
