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Jewish museologies and the politics of display - call for papers

Date

A two-day international symposium will take place in Leeds in the spring of 2016, to explore the critical debates about Jewish museologies in the light of Jewish institutions and Jewish presences in non-Jewish museums (city museums, national museums, specialist museums).

Organised by the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Leeds, this conference takes place on 13 & 14 March 2016 and will include panels on current museum developments in Germany, Central-Eastern Europe, Western Europe (continental), UK/Ireland. The event also hosts a workshop on current local/grassroots archival and heritage collecting and research, and community engagement.

The Centre for Jewish Studies welcomes proposals to speak at this event. Confirmed speakers to date include: Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek (independent curator and researcher), Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews) and Cilly Kugelman (Jewish Museum Berlin).

In the wake of the opening of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, the first major museum of Jewish history in an East-Central European capital in over a century, this conference aims to reassess the diversity of Jewish museologies in post-World War II Europe, as well as in the context the UK/Ireland, as developments are taking place in Leeds, Manchester and elsewhere. These developments, decentralised as they are, raise questions about what Jewish museology should be and can be: a museology of celebration or commemoration? A history lesson or an encounter with art and aesthetics? This conference will consider these questions, and will address specific issues relating to Jewish museums and Jewish history in museums in the UK and Ireland in a European context.

As debates on the musealisation of Jewish history / culture proliferate, this conference will engage international curators and scholars to address some of the following questions:

  • Are there commonalities among Jewish museums in Europe?
  • What are these museums and exhibitions trying to achieve?
  • How do they construct and involve their stakeholders?
  • How do they engage with the political discourses that shape their societies?
  • Is a dividing line emerging between museums in countries directly affected by the Holocaust and others not directly affected?
  • What research is needed, and has become possible as archival resources become available and laws change?
  • With new challenges arising in living in a Europe increasingly divided about its asylum policies and vulnerable to extremist violence, what museological reorientations may be needed?

Please propose a topic and provide an abstract for a 20 minute paper by email to Eva Frojmovic at clsef@leeds.ac.uk.

Deadline: 15 January 2016
Subject heading: Jewish Museologies

This event is organised by the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Leeds and is supported by a grant from the European Association for Jewish Studies.