We are pleased to share the Call for Applications for the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies fellowship at the University of Michigan, 2023-2024.
The theme is Jewish Visual Cultures.
Deadline for applications is November 7, 2022.
This theme year at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies recognizes historical precedents even as it builds upon and departs from them. In the 19th century Jews commissioned and collected art; patronized art and institutions that collected art; served as benefactors of archaeological missions and excavations; and dealt commercially in art of different cultures. Individual, universalist, and integrationist orientations drove Jews’ engagement with art. But Jewish art, in all its manifestations, seldom drew their interest and they had little knowledge of what constituted the Jewish visual world prior to the 19th century. Oblivious to what had been produced for centuries in the realm of monuments, manuscripts, synagogue architecture, ephemera, ceremonial art (Judaica), printed books, drawings, and fabrics, they and others remained aloof from how visual culture occupied a significant place in Jewish historical development.
By the 21st century, these attitudes and assumptions had changed radically.
The Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies seeks to explore many facets of Jewish visual imagination. How did Jewish experiences with and attitudes toward the visual intersect with those of the majority populations, and with minority populations in Israel? How did Jewish visuality challenge or coexist with the hallmark of Jewish culture – the literary text? How does visual culture broaden the Jewish narrative?
The Frankel Institute theme year on Jewish visual cultures will address these and other questions.
The Institute invites applications from senior and junior scholars from a wide range of disciplines, as well as artists and curators, to investigate and explicate Jewish visual cultures from the medieval period to the present.
Eligibility
Fellowship applications are accepted from both tenured and untenured faculty as well as from recent Ph.D.’s without a tenure-track position and professors emeriti. Where appropriate, applications are accepted from independent artists, documentary film-makers, and writers.
You may apply either for a full academic year (usually September 1-April 30) or for a single term (Fall terms runs September-December and Winter Term runs January-April). Fellows can serve no more than two terms within a period of four years.
See description of fellowship here
Click for specific details and the online application link