Unfortunately, due to unforeseen personal circumstances with one of our speakers, we are going to be postponing this event until Fall 2023. We are so grateful to all of you who have expressed such keen interest in the topic! If you are not already on our email list, please sign up HERE to make sure you’re notified of the new date and time when it becomes available. We will email and post updates here when we have them.
The Cult of Spain: Baghdadi Jewish Communities in Bombay and Shanghai in the Early 1930s
Friday April 21st
10am-12pm (EST) in-person and on Zoom
Great Room, 19 University Place
Join us as Marcella Simoni (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) presents her work-in-progress on what she is calling “the cult of Spain,” about the Baghdadi Jewish communities in Bombay and Shanghai in the early 1930s turning to Spain as a locus of nostalgia in the run-up to the anniversary of Maimonides’ birth. She will give a presentation and then be in conversation with Zvi Ben-Dor Benite (New York University).
Advanced registration is required. Please use this google form to register.
*Please note, due to our current COVID policies, registration for non-NYU affiliated, in-person attendance closes on April 14th. NYU affiliates and zoom attendees can register up until one hour before the event.
Presenter Bios:
Marcella Simoni is Associate Professor of History and Institutions of Asia at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She holds a PhD from the University of London (UCL, 2004) and has been a research fellow at Brown University (1995; 1997), at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles (2001), at the Centre de Recherche Francais à Jerusalem (2009), at INALCO, Paris (2010) and in the same year she received the Alessandro Vaciago Prize for Social and Political Science from the Accademia dei Lincei. At Ca’ Foscari, she teaches “History of Israel and Palestine” and “History of the Jews in Asia.” She is also affiliated with NYU Florence where she teaches “Jews in 20th Century Europe.” She has published two books on health and welfare during the British Mandate in Palestine (A Healthy Nation and At the Margins of Conflict, Cafoscarina 2010), has edited various volumes on and has written extensively on peer reviewed Italian and international historical journals. She is a founding and a board member of the journal “Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History” and a board member of the “Journal of Modern Jewish Studies”. Her research interests include Jews in Asia, civil society in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the history of medicine and public health, a focus on history, memory and trauma, cinema in the Middle East.
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite (Bio Forthcoming)