Call for papers: Conference on Jewish travel literature. In New York, December 4-5

We are pleased to share this Call for Papers for a conference in New York, December 4-5, on Jewish travel literature.

On December 4-5, 2023, the Center for Jewish Studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center will convene a conference on the subject of travel literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The goal is to bring together scholars from across disciplines to discuss recent turns towards travel literature, and to think about new departures.

For centuries, Jews established an image of the “world outside” based on writings by travelers and pilgrims. But starting in the Modern Period, as the nations of Western and Central Europe engaged with Africa, Asia, and the Americas through imperial power and the emergence of “scientific” approaches to foreigners, European Jews became major participants in the genre of travel writing. Though the Jews of Europe lacked the political power of European rulers, travel literature was among the arenas through which European Jews could exert cultural strength across cultures. By the nineteenth century, adventurers— Jew and Gentile — disseminated their observations through the burgeoning Jewish press; scholars of the ancient world relied on archaeologists’ transcriptions to underpin the growing field of Wissenschaft des Judentums; and modern politicos turned their gaze to the Levant, their image of the holy land resting on contemporary and medieval accounts of travelers.  

 Some questions the conference hopes to answer include: 

• In what ways did travelogs reinscribe power differentials between Europeans and their colonial targets and in what ways did Jewish travelogs in particular complicate the colonizer/colonized dichotomy? 
• How did the translation of travelogs from European languages to Yiddish and Hebrew change the narration of space?
• How did travelers use gender to understand the foreign?
• Can we speak of a coherent “European Jewish gaze” during this period?

The conference will run on December 4th and 5th at the CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016).

Orgaizers aim to provide a $250 travel subsidy to all panelists. 

Proposals including a brief CV and abstract (no more than 250 words) are due July 21st, with notification by August 15th. 

Please email abstracts to Phil Keisman (pkeismanlc@gmail.com) and Samuel Kessler ([email protected]).