Scholars Conference

2022 Biennial Scholars' Conference

The American Jewish Historical Society's Academic Council is currently accepting proposals for the 2022 Biennial Scholar's Conference being held at Tulane University, May 15-17, 2022.

This conference seeks to emphasize and explore connections, dialogues, and debates in American Jewish studies from transdisciplinary perspectives. We seek papers across a wide range of eras and geographies, including North America, South America, and the Caribbean. We encourage papers that engage with how Jewish Studies scholarship reaches across regions, communities, historical periods, and/or disciplines to open up new areas of inquiry. 

The theme for this year’s conference is Building Bridges in the Americas. Bridges facilitate movement from one point to another, often spanning a seeming impasse to take us from one place to another. By enabling new relations and migrations, bridges direct flow. Historical actors have sometimes imagined themselves or their lives as bridges between disparate experiences; as feminist writer Cherríe L. Moraga puts it, “I am a woman with a foot in both worlds; and I refuse the split. I feel the necessity for dialogue. Sometimes I feel it urgently.” With the imagery of bridges in mind, possible conference topics might include: indigenity; Jews of color; multiracial, interfaith, queer and trans experiences; migration; cultural flows; translocality; diversity and inclusion within the Jewish community; less represented voices, populations, and subjects; new models of periodization; ties between American Jewry and Israel; and Jewish studies’ relationship to other fields of study. 

Candidates can view complete instructions and application criteria and submit via the AJHS Submittable form by November 10, 2021 to be eligible.