This project examines the causes, nature, and consequences of Italian Jews’ support for imperialism. I argue that between the 1890s and 1930s, Italian Jews took an active part in racializing and controlling indigenous Libyan and Ethiopian Jews. Moreover, by promoting the empire and upholding a racial hierarchy between Europeans and Africans, Italian Jews unwittingly contributed to their own downfall, since…

Abraham Liddell, Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Columbia University will present the talk “Cape Verde and the Early Modern Black Atlantic” as a part of the lecture series “Charting the Portuguese Black Atlantic” at New York University. More information on this lecture series here. Through Portuguese settlement in the fifteenth century, the Cape Verde islands became a launch base for trade…

Panel Discussion on Zoom This event is part of Giorno della Memoria 2022 In order to participate, RSVP and you will receive an e-mail with your Zoom link by 12pm on February 1 If you don't receive the e-mail by then, contact us at casa.italiana@nyu.edu The Garden of the Finzi-Continis The Novel, the Film, and the Opera On the occasion of the world premiere of…

This lecture will tell the story of a long-overlooked Ottoman Jewish community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing extensively on a rich body of previously untapped Ladino archival material, the lecture will also offer a new read on Jewish modernity. Across Europe, Jews were often confronted with the notion that their religious and cultural distinctiveness was somehow…

Professor Jonathan Haslam will discuss his most recent book, The Spectre of War. International Communism and the Origins of World War II, which explores the roots of the Second World War in the fear of Communism prevalent across continents during the interwar period. Jonathan Haslam retired as George F. Kennan Professor at the Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study last July. He…

Opera arrived in America as a European import, with Jews playing an essential role in its promotion from the moment Lorenzo da Ponte landed in Philadelphia. A century later, a generation of European refugees would take their operatic experience and use it to develop two of the most quintessentially American art forms: the Hollywood movie and the Broadway musical. But,…

In 1986, when her mother died at the age of sixty-four, Eleanor Reissa went through all of her belongings. In the back of her mother’s lingerie drawer, she found an old leather purse. Inside that purse was a wad of dried-up papers in a brittle baggie: fifty-six letters handwritten in German by her father, in 1949—only four years after Auschwitz—to…

Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for a presentation of the book Contemporary Ukrainian Art and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives (ibidem Press, 2021). The event will feature presentations by the volume’s editor Svitlana Biedarieva and contributors Ieva Astahovska, Olena Martynyuk, and Margaret Tali with moderator Mark Andryczyk (Harriman Institute). Contemporary Ukrainian Art and Baltic Art focuses on political and social expressions in contemporary art of…

While James Joyce’s place in the modernist pantheon has long been firmly entrenched, its resonances continue to be uncovered. In the Russian context, the Irish writer has occupied many roles since his work was first translated in the mid-1920s. This talk will trace the development not of a monolithic Joyce, but rather of five separate Russian Joyces — the versions of…

In The Hare with Amber Eyes, celebrated artist Edmund de Waal investigates his illustrious family history, their journey from Odessa to Vienna and Paris in the 19th century, and how they lost everything during the Holocaust except a collection of rare Japanese netsuke, which were rescued by a family maid. This collection is now the subject of an exhibition at…

Please join us for a discussion with Tinatin Japaridze (MARS-REERS ’19), author of Stalin’s Millenials: Nostalgia, Trauma, and Nationalism (Lexington Books, February 2022), moderated by Alexander Cooley, Claire Tow Professor of Political Science, Barnard College. Stalin’s Millennials examines Joseph Stalin’s increasing popularity in the post-Soviet space, and analyzes how his image, and the nostalgia it evokes, is manipulated and exploited for political gain. The author argues…

**This event will take place in French** La Maison Française est ravie d'accueillir l'auteure Gabriela Trujillo pour une discussion autour son roman acclamé L'invention de Louvette. Son livre raconte l'enfance et l'adolescence d'une fille née dans un petit pays d'Amérique centrale. Opérée, suite à une lésion occulaire, Louvette explore les souvenirs enfouis de son passé et ses rêves d'avenir. Imaginatif…

Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a conversation among Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, and Jon Cho-Polizzi, which will be moderated by Tiffany Florvil to celebrate the digital publication of the English-language translation of Your Homeland Is Our Nightmare with TRANSIT Journal. RSVP here.

Casa Italiana hosts this book club online on the Zoom platform to discuss contemporary Italian books in Italian. The Club is open to anyone and its purpose is to offer the possibility to practice the Italian language. Everybody is encouraged to speak. The group suggests the books, usually by contemporary Italian authors, that reflect the changes that have taken place with time in…

Through the 1930s Jews fled Germany, and then Austria, seeking a safe haven as Nazi persecution intensified.  In this program, we will look at three cities of refuge, and neighborhoods within these cities that were focal points of settlement (Rehavia in Jerusalem, Washington Heights in New York, and Hampstead/Swiss Cottage in London in particular) for the new arrivals.  Speaking with…

In the midst of a refugee crisis, with an official count of 82.4 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide, the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity (GC-CUNY) and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies (NYU) continue to offer a year-long series that tackles historical and current cases. What prompted Viennese Jews to return…

INFOS RSVP À SUIVRE **This event will take place in French** Sûr Zoom. Originaire de Guinée, Tierno Monénembo discutera de sa riche carrière littéraire et politique avec notre amie de longue date de La Maison Française Laure Adler dans le cadre de notre série "Machines à Écrire." Publié pour la première fois en 1979, le travail de Tierno parle des…

Please join us for the fifth event of our Work of Care in Russia speaker series, a book talk by Eugene Raikhel, author of Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic (Cornell University Press, 2016). Moderated by Svetlana Borodina. Critics of narcology—as addiction medicine is called in Russia—decry it as being “backward,” hopelessly behind contemporary global medical practices in relation to addiction and substance abuse, and…

Please join us for the launch of the new volume Rethinking the Gulag: Identities, Sources, Legacies (Indiana University Press, March 2022). Editors Alan Barenberg and Emily Johnson will be joined by contributors Gavin Slade (Nazarbayev University), Mikhail Nakonechnyi (University of Helsinki), and Sarah Young (University College London), discussant Dan Healey (University of Oxford), and moderator Mark Lipovetsky (Columbia University). The Soviet Gulag was one of the largest, most complex, and deadliest systems of incarceration in the…

On February 26, join us for a Nordic Literature in Translation event with this year’s American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prizewinner, Randi Ward, and the author of the work in translation, Kim Simonsen! Now in its 43rd year, ASF’s Annual Translation Competition awards prizes for outstanding translations of poetry, fiction, drama, or literary prose written by a 20th- or 21st-century Nordic author. In…

In this talk, Professor Scott Kenworthy will discuss his new book (co-authored with Alexander Agadjanian), Understanding World Christianity: Russia (Fortress Press, 2021), with NYU Professor Yanni Kotsonis.  The Russian Orthodox Church is currently playing a very prominent role in Russian society and politics, and it is not possible to fully understand Russia today without it. The current role of Russian Orthodoxy is…

Please join us for a presentation by author and literary historian Maya Kucherskaya, a Visiting Scholar at the Harriman Institute, moderated by Mark Lipovetksy (Slavic Department). Literary historian Maya Kucherskaya presents her work on the creative assignments Joseph Brodsky gave to his students at Mount Holyoke College as a part of his poetry course. Drawing on archival documents from Yale University’s Beinecke Library,…