Free Public Seminar
Orientalism and the German Jews in the Age of Empire
Dr John Efron
University of California at Berkeley
The nineteenth century saw the emergence of Jewish historians. Among their earliest projects was to study the pasts of other peoples and religious traditions. Such a development saw the birth of Jewish Orientalist scholarship, its principal focus being the world of Islam. This in turn spawned a number of research agendas: Jewish historians studying Islam itself and on its own terms; the connection between Judaism and Islam; and the study of Jewish life in the Muslim world. Orientalism is normatively associated with imperialism and colonial politics and culture but in the case of Jewish orientalists from Germany, and they were among the leading figures in the field, their decidedly anti-imperial stance plus their affinity for the world of Islam, due in large part to their Jewish religious identities and marginal status within the German academy, forces us to rethink the entire notion of Orientalism as a simplistic Manichean divide, characterised by negative Western representations of the Middle Eastern Other.
John Efron, a specialist in the cultural and social history of German Jewry, holds the Koret Chair in Jewish History at UC-Berkeley, and is Director of Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies. A native of Melbourne, Australia, he has a B.A. from Monash University, has studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, took his M.A. at New York University and earned a Ph.D. (awarded with Distinction) at Columbia University. In addition to many articles, his books include: Medicine and the German Jews: A History (Yale University Press, 2001); and Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (Yale University Press, 1994). He also co-edited the volume, Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (University Press of New England, 1998). His most recent book is The Jews: A History (Prentice Hall) and he is currently at work on another volume entitled Orientalism and the Jews in the Age of Empire.
- Date:
- Tuesday 5th August 2008
- Time:
- 1:00pm
- Location:
- Theatre B, Old Arts Building
University of Melbourne - Enquiries:
- Dvir Abramovich
Centre for Jewish History & Culture
(+61 3) 8344 3789
dvir@unimelb.edu.au