NEH

Venice, the Jews, and Italian Culture: Historical Eras and Cultural Representations

Directors: Murray Baumgarten, University of California, Santa Cruz and
Shaul Bassi, University of Venice

News:

We are pleased to announce that the National Endowment for the Humanities has invited us to conduct the Institute on “Venice, the Jews, and Italian Culture: Historical Eras and Cultural Representations” again next summer. The Institute will be held in Venice from June 16–July 18, 2008. The application deadline is March 3, 2008.

College and university teachers of American undergraduate students are invited to apply. Qualified independent scholars and those employed by museums, libraries, historical societies, and other organizations may be eligible for consideration as well, provided they can effectively advance the teaching and research goals of the institute. Participants will receive a stipend from the NEH towards their expenses.

Brief Description:

College and University teachers are invited to participate in this five-week, inter-disciplinary institute exploring the cultural, intellectual, and historic experience of Venetian Jewry. Participants will receive a stipend from the NEH towards their expenses. Our primary focus will be the Ghetto of Venice, which gave its name to all such subsequent ethnic enclosures. We will explore the history of the Ghetto of Venice as built environment, cultural text, and symbolic site. Together we will examine various artistic materials representing Italian and Venetian Jewish life, including literary, artistic, and dramatic works.This will make it possible for us to reinhabit the Ghetto through the eras of its existence. The Institute will begin with the Renaissance, while emphasizing the modern experience of Venetian Jewry, a paradigmatic Italian Jewish community. The program is designed to benefit scholars in various fields, including European culture, literature, art, and history, Holocaust studies, Italian studies, and Jewish studies.

For more information, read the Director's Letter for the NEH Venice Institute or see NEH Institute 2008.

To get a better idea of what Venice means for scholars, please read Murray Baumgarten's essay "Dancing at Two Weddings: Rebecca Goldstein's Mazel Between Exile & Diaspora"(Wettstein, H., ed., Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 78-112) here or Shaul Bassi's essay "The Venetian Ghetto and Modern Jewish Identity" (Originally published in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought,(New York: American Jewish Congress, 2002) Vol. 4, Fall 2002 here.