We are pleased to share this Call for Papers for the international conference Urban Jewish Cemeteries in Central-Eastern Europe between Early Modern and the Present Times: Research and Valuation to be held in Alba Iulia, Romania (and online), October 17-18, 2024.
Deadline for submissions, June 15, 2024.
The conference aims “to foster debate on the strategies applied by the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the field of Jewish cemetery preservation, as well as the research methods used by specialists and examples of the preservation of Jewish cemeteries from the perspective of their signification as cultural heritage of living communities.”
The conference is supported by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, the Alba Iulia Jewish Community and Alba County Council.
It is seen as a follow up to several other conferences, including European Jewish Cemeteries: An Interdisciplinary Conference, co-organized by JHE in Vilnius, 2015 and Urban Jewish Heritage: Presence and Absence, Kraków, 2018; as well as published research such as Rudolf Klein’s Metropolitan Jewish Cemeteries of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Study, 2018; and projects devoted such as those by the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, initiated in 2015.
Organisers propose several key issues for discussion:
1. Jewish cemeteries from community projects to government preservation strategies.
2. Jewish cemeteries and the topography of the urban space up to the late modern period.
3. The fate of Jewish cemeteries in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
4. Advanced technologies and methodologies in the archaeology of old urban cemeteries: ethical and practical issues.
5. Style, text and visual representation on Jewish gravestones; analyses of the status and identity of the people commemorated in Jewish funerary monuments.
6. The evolution of Jewish cemeteries, between the preservation of the ritual tradition and the influence of non-Jewish architecture, art and culture.
7. From conservation to restoration and landscape redevelopment: necessary steps in the recontextualization of Jewish cemeteries.
Proposals are invited for papers that fit one of these proposed themes or a similar topic.
The deadline for submitting paper titles and summaries (of about 300 words) is June 15, 2024. Acceptance will be confirmed by June 30, 2024.
For questions and submissions contact Daniel Dumitran: [email protected]
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Professor Daniel Dumitran, PhD. 1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia, Romania Initiator of the research project of the Jewish cemetery in Alba Iulia
Sidonia Petronela Olea, PhD Restorer, Coordinator of the AFCP project Conservation and Restoration of Monumental Funerary St.ones in the Jewish Cemetery in Alba Iulia, Romania National Museum of the Union, Alba Iulia
Claudiu Stoian, PhD Lecturer and Director of the Jewish Studies program University of Bucharest, Romania
Click here to download the full Call as a PDF