Jews, Native Americans and the Western World Order
Sunday, April 25th, 2010, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Schermerhorn Extension, Room 754
1200 Amsterdam Ave.
A symposium on Jews and Native Americans, two peoples made into Others by Christian Euro-America in fascinatingly similar yet different ways: as remnants of primitivity, as tribal peoples, as enduring threats and unassimilable enemies, and as romanticized traditionals possessing the solution to the ills of modernity.
Directions: Enter at 116th Street (at Broadway or Amsterdam)
Enter building through Schermerhorn Hall; Follow signs when you enter to the elevators to the Symposium in 754 Schermerhorn Ext.
Co-sponsored with the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.
Schedule
8:30-9:00 am: Registration and light breakfast
9:00-9:15 am: Opening Remarks
Jeremy Dauber, Jonathan Schorsch
9:15-10:00 am: Jonathan Boyarin, excerpts from The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe (Chicago, 2010)
10:10-11:45 am: Session I: Social Relations
Jonathan Boyarin, Christian Cwik, David Koffman, Michael Rom
12:00-1:00 pm: Lunch (provided, on-site)
1:05-2:45 pm: Session II: Textual Relations
Sarah Casteel, Jennifer Glaser, Stephen Katz, Jack Kugelmass, Alan Mintz, Rachel Rubenstein
3:00-4:30 pm: Session III: Theopolitics
Christopher Bracken, James Hatley, Nimachia Hernandez, Akim Reinhardt, [R. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi]
4:45-5:30 pm Wrap-up conversation
Participants and Papers
- Boyarin, Jonathan (U. of North Carolina, Dept. of Religious Studies), “Trickster?s Children: Paul Radin, Stanley Diamond and Filiation in Anthropology.”
- Bracken, Chris (U. of Alberta), “When Indians were Jews: William Apess?s Racialized Concept of Right.”
- Casteel, Sarah Phillips (Carleton University), “Sephardism and Marranism in Native American Fiction of the Quincentenary: Dorris and Erdrich’s /The Crown of Columbus /and Vizenor’s /The Heirs of Co-lumbus.”
- Cwik, Christian (History, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia; University of Cologne, Germany), “Sephardic networks and the Guajira Peninsula Contraband in the 17th and 18th Centuries.”
- Glaser, Jennifer (Assistant Professor, English and Comparative Literature, University of Cincinnati), “Sovereignty, Diaspora, and the Indigene in Michael Chabon?s The Yiddish Policeman?s Union.”
- Hatley, James (Department of Philosophy, Fulton School of Liberal Arts, Salisbury University), “Spider Woman Naming Adam Naming Spider Woman: Midrash as Storytelling as Midrash.”
- Hernandez, Nimachia (Independent Scholar), “Coming Home in America: Native American and Jew-ish Participation in the Making of a National Narrative.”
- Katz, Stephen (Indiana University, Jewish Studies Program), “A One-Sided Dialogue: Lisitzky?s Indian Poems.”
- Koffman, David (NYU, History), “Manifesting Jewish Destiny: Jews, Native Americans, and the Violent Frontier.”
- Kugelmass, Jack (U. of Florida-Gainesville, Dept. of Anthropology), “„Since I Saved You, You Belong to Me:? A Yiddish Pseudoethnographic Account of „Primitive Tribes and Civilized Communities? in Peru.”
- Mintz, Alan (JTS), “Three Constructions of the Native American in American Hebrew Poetry.”
- Reinhardt, Akim (History, Towson University), “Contested and Overlapping Notions of Indigenous-ness Among Jews and Indians.”
- Rom, Michael (U. of Toronto), “The Métis Messiah: Louis Riel and the Jews.”
- Rubinstein, Rachel (Hampshire, Jewish American Literature and Culture), “Tribes Lost and Found: Mestizaje and the Jewish Question.”
- Schachter-Shalomi, Rabbi Zalman (World Wisdom Chair, The Naropa Institute), “Jewish Dialogue with Native Americans.”
All the papers will be available at http://iijs.columbia.edu/WWOConference.php for reading.