Modern Jewish Studies Colloquium: What is Jewish Studies?

The Modern Jewish Studies Colloquium is inaugurated by a conversation about the formative history and the current state of the field of Jewish Studies, featuring Jeffrey Shandler (Rutgers) and John Efron (UC Berkeley), moderated by curator Francesco Spagnolo.

Jeffrey Shandler is Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University and current President of the Association of Jewish Studies. His most recent publications include Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America (New York University Press, 2009) and Adventures in Yiddishland:  Postvernacular Language and Culture (University of California Press, 2005). Shandler’s current research on the role of inventory and list-making practices in modern Jewish life is featured in the Fall 2012 exhibition, Case Study No. 2: The Inventory Project, which opened at The Magnes on August 29.

John Efron is Koret Professor of Jewish History at UC Berkeley. He is the author of The Jews: A History (2009), with Matthias Lehmann and Steven Weitzman, Medicine and the German Jews: A History (Yale University Press, Spring 2001), Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de Siécle Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), and the editor of Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi ed., with Elisheva Carlebach and David N. Myers (1998). Efron’s current book project is a study of Orientalism in German-Jewish culture.