Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures
Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures

Spiritual Homelands

Wednesday, October 7, 2015 to Friday, October 9, 2015

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

5:00 PM: Commonwealth Room, Newcomb Hall

  • Welcome: Asher Biemann, Director, Center for German Studies.
  • Welcome: Jeffrey W. Legro, Vice Provost for Global Affairs & Taylor Professor of Politics, University of Virginia.
  • Introduction: Gabriel Finder, Director, Jewish Studies Program.
  • Opening Remarks: Richard Cohen, Academic Director, Daat Hamakom, Israel Center for Research Excellence, Hebrew University.
  • Opening Lecture: Fu Youde, Shandong University: The Jewish Communities in Medieval and Modern China.
  • Followed by reception.

8:00 PM: Dinner for conference participants.

 

Thursday, October 8 

8:30 AM: Breakfast, Nau 342, Lounge

9:00-11:00 AM: Panel 1a. German Conference Room, New Cabell 236

  • Chair: Jeffrey Grossman University of Virginia.
  • Our Home in the Land of Israel: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust.
  • Avinoam Patt Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies, University of Hartford
  • A Jewish Historian's Path from Communist Poland to Israel: The Case of Ber Mark.
  • Gabriel Finder University of Virginia
  • The Diaspora Internationalism of Leyb Naydus. Jordan Finkin Hebrew Union College
  • Homeland in Dzigan and Schumacher's Yiddish Theater. Diego Rotman Hebrew University 

9:00-11:00 AM: Panel 1b. Nau Hall 342

  • Chair: Stephen Dowden Brandeis University.
  • German, Jew and German-Jewish Exile: Ernst Toller in World War I. Steven Schouten Centre for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany
  • Flight to Europe: Denial as Strategy in Erich Auerbach’s Turkish Exile. Moritz W. Meutzner University of Minnesota
  • ’In der Fremde zuhause’: Contingent Cosmopolitanism and Elective Exile in the Writing of Hans Keilson.
  • Anna Maree Parkinson Northwestern University

1:00-3:00 PM: Panel 2b. German Conference Room, New Cabell 236

  • Chair: Caroline Rody University of Virginia.
  • The Jewish Identity Bifurcated in Connection and Disconnection: A Talk on Saul Bellow’s The Bellarosa Connection.
  • Qiao Guo Qiang Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai
  • Match Made in Fiction—Reconstructing an Imaginary Home in 21 st Century Jewish American Literature.
  • Noam Gil Tel Aviv University
  • The Poetry and Drama of Spiritual Exile in the Western American Jewish Archive.
  • Eleanor Kaufman University of California, Los Angeles
  • Oy! Gevalt!: ‘Der Volf,’ Violence, and Community. Jay Geller Vanderbilt University

3:30-5:30 PM: Panel 3a. German Conference Room, New Cabell 236

  • Chair: Richard Cohen Hebrew University.
  • The End of Exile? The Metz Contest of 1 787 Revisited. Pierre Birnbaum Université Paris 1
  • From Berlin to Paris (and Return): Jewish Travel between 1791 and 1812.
  • Liliane Weissberg University of Pennsylvania
  • France as Spiritual Homeland for German Jews: Heine, Benjamin, Roth.
  • Jeffrey Grossman University of Virginia
  • Longing for Paris—Israeli Authors and the Construction of a Timeless Blind Spot in Europe.
  • Judith Müller Ben Gurion University

11:30 AM - 12:30 PM: Lunch buffet. Nau 342, Lounge.

1 :00-3:00 PM: Panel 2a. Nau Hall 342

  • Chair: Asher Biemann University of Virginia.
  • Two Homelands, Two Souls: Avigdor Hameiri’s Hybrid Identity. Miriam Neiger Hebrew University
  • Lost Worlds and Promised Lands: Palestine and the German- Jewish Imagination of the Fifth Aliyah.
  • Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich Mary Washington University
  • Israel and the Contemporary German-Jewish Imaginary. Agnes Mueller University of South Carolina
  • ’MOVING’ to ‘MAKOM ACHER’ (Another Place): Language and Space in Hebrew-Jewish-Israeli Fiction.
  • Dekel Shay Schory Ben Gurion University 

3:30-5:30 PM: Panel 3b. Nau Hall 342 Chair: Yoav Peled Tel Aviv University.

  • Homeland in the Palestinian Diasporic Imaginary. Nina Fischer University ofEdinburgh
  • Exilic Jerusalems: Identity Destabilizations and Place in New Mizrahi and Palestinian Israeli Writing.
  • Ranen Omer-Sherman University of Louisville
  • Whose House Is This? Reflections on Glencliffe, Jerusalem, and the Great House Novel.
  • Caroline Rody University of Virginia
  • Leaving the Land and the People: Emigration and Religious Conversion in the Young State of Israel.
  • Ori Yehudai McGill University

7:00 PM: Gala Dinner for Conference Participants and Invited Guests. Colonnade Club, The Solarium Room. Generously underwritten by Mr. Kenneth Walker, Virginia.

 

Friday, October 9

8:30 AM: Breakfast, Nau 342, Lounge

9:00-11:00 AM: Panel 4. German Conference Room, New Cabell 236

  • Chair: Steven Bowman University of Cincinnati.
  • The ‘Word’ as Home during Exile: The Ladino Poetry of Juan Gelman. Judith K. Lang Hilgartner University of Virginia
  • Two Muslims turned Christian Priests: the Hitches of Conversion in the Early Modern Era.
  • Diana Galarreta University of Virginia
  • Beyond the Muslim/Jewish Divide: Inventing a Homeland in the Forgotten Novels of Lev Nussinbaum aka Kurban Said.
  • Esra Almas Haliç University, Istanbul
  • Negotiated Memory, Hybridity and Imaginary Homelands – Autobiographical and Autofictional Literary Discourses in Adopted Languages.
  • Agata Joanna Lagiewka University ofAlberta

11:30AM-1:00 PM: Panel 5. German Conference Room, New Cabell 236

  • Chair: Michael Zhao Yongjian University of Virginia.
  • Realms of Exile: Gina Kaus’ Migration of Worlds, Words and Womanhood.
  • Regina Range University ofAlabama, Tuscaloosa
  • Gertrude Berg and Glikl bas Judah Leib: Self-Fashioning as Spiritual Homeland.
  • Rachel Greenblatt Wesleyan University
  • Tailored Heimat: Hadassah America and the Creation of an Israeli ‘National Optics’ for the American Eye.
  • Rebekka Großmann Hebrew University

1 :00-2:00 PM: Lunch buffet. Nau 342, Lounge.

2:00-4:00 PM: Panel 6a. German Conference Room, New Cabell 236

  • Chair: Hanna Schmidt Hollaender University of Virginia.
  • A Wanderer in Search of a Homeland: The Case of Romain Gary. Maya Guez Tel Aviv University
  • Homeland as Exile, Exile as Homeland in the Writings of Boris Khazanov.
  • Stefani Hoffman Hebrew University
  • Exile and Interpretation: Leo Strauss and Karl Löwith.
  • David Weinstein Wake Forest University & Universität Oldenburg and
  • Avihu Zakai Hebrew University
  • ’A Psalm for the Citizen of the World’: Feuchtwanger-Flavius’s Spiritual Homelands in Germany-Rome as Reflected in the Josephus Trilogy.
  • Yael Feldman New York University

2:00-4:00 PM: Panel 6b. Nau Hall 342

  • Chair: Vanessa Ochs University of Virginia.
  • A Yiddish ‘We Are the World’: An international Klezmer community coalesces in Wahlheimat Berlin.
  • Joel Rubin University of Virginia
  • Emine Sevgi Özdamar's Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde: Divided Stage as Berliner Heimat.
  • Zvi Gilboa University of Virginia
  • Babel as Homeland.
  • Steven Dowden Brandeis University
  • A compulsion to Move: The Poetics of Viennese Space. Michal Peles-Almagor University of Chicago

With the generous support of:

The Gunst Trust
The Buckner W. Clay Endowment
The Jewish Studies Program, University of Virginia The Center for German Studies, University of Virginia Comparative Literature Program, University of Virginia The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures The Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures
Daat Hamakom-Center for the Study of Cultures of Place in Jewish Modernity
Supported by the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and The Israel Science Foundation (grant No 1 798/1 2)

4:00 PM: Concluding Reception. Darden Lounge, Gibson-Nau Hall Concourse, 3rd Floor.

7:00 PM: Dinner for Conference participants at Hillel House, Brody Jewish Center at the University of Virginia, 1 824 University Circle.