UPDATE (3/29/2017)
This one-day conference will now be taking place on Thursday, December 14, 2017 at the University of Sussex.
If interested, please send 300-word proposals for 30-minute papers, along with a short CV, to the conference coordinators at jewsandquakers.conference@gmail.com by midnight Monday, April 10, 2017. The organizers aim to respond to proposals by Monday, April 24, 2017. To register for attendance at the conference please email the coordinators to express your interest. Please give details of special dietary or access requirements. This event is supported by the Gerald Hodgett award.
More information about the call for papers and the conference can be found below or on the conference blog.
____
ORIGINAL CALL FOR PAPERS:
The Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex and Woodbrooke Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies, Birmingham, invite submissions for a groundbreaking joint one-day conference to be held at the University of Sussex on December 14, 2017, under the title “Jews and Quakers: On the borders of acceptability.”
The conference aims to explore the impact on the thought, theology, and praxis of Jewish and Quaker communities following experiences of persecution, political alienation, and outsider status in the wider communities in which they have lived in Europe, North America, and globally since the seventeenth century. It offers a rare opportunity for researchers to identify and explore such parallels and differences as might be found between the experiences of Jews and Quakers.
The coordinators welcome papers from established scholars, postdoctoral early career researchers, and doctoral candidates. The deadline for submissions is midnight on April 10, 2017. More details can be found below or on their website:
The organizers welcome papers from those working in Jewish studies, Quaker studies, history, economic history, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, and other related fields with a view to bring scholars from a number of fields into conversation with one another to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion and shared comparative analyses.
This conference will offer an opportunity for discussion between academics working in separate fields with shared thematic interests.
Potential suitable topics for submissions on the theme include, but are not limited to, the following:
- the outsider’s eye, observations on the dominant culture
- surviving persecution
- suffering and group identity
- compromise and assimilation
- family and community cohesion
- theological responses to the experience of marginalisation
- relations with other religious organisations, faiths, and minority groups
- accessing education, housing, and the labour market
- social and political activism
- philanthropy
- utopian social visions
- wealth and poverty
- discipline, leadership, and diversity within communities
- citizenship and identity
Papers are also welcomed that address directly the historical connections between Quakers and Jews and the impact upon each community of those relations, both in the historical and in the contemporary context.
There is no charge for giving papers or for attendance. Lunch and refreshments will be provided free of charge. Travel cannot be reimbursed, so those wishing to attend should be prepared to self-fund travel costs or find a suitable sponsor. Submissions from established scholars, postdoctoral early career researchers, and doctoral candidates are welcomed.
Professor Todd M. Endelman, William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Michigan has provisionally agreed to give the keynote address (subject to confirmation). Concluding remarks will be given by Professor Ben Pink Dandelion of the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, and the Universities of Birmingham and Lancaster.
Please send 300 word proposals for 30 minute papers, along with a short CV, to the conference coordinators at jewsandquakers.conference@gmail.com by midnight on Monday, April 10, 2017.
To register for attendance at the conference please email the coordinators to express your interest. Please give details of special dietary or access requirements. This event is supported by the Gerald Hodgett award.
The call for papers can be found here.