2022 Australian Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference

Jewish History in a Global Context: Telling Transnational Stories

Ever since the seminal 2005 volume Connected Worlds; History in Transnational Perspective, co-edited by Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake, brought transnational approaches to Australian history into focus, a growing scholarship has examined the ways in which the past and its representations are shaped through processes and relationships across national borders. Jewish historical scholarship has traditionally been alive to these approaches with mobilities, diaspora, travel, and memory as key themes (Kahn and Mendelsohn 2014). Despite this, as Sarah Green (2008) and others remind us, borders are processes; acts of imagination as well as objects that perform in myriad ways to try and halt the movement of people, things and ideas. This conference seeks to explore what new ways of approaching Jewish histories might be developed through the intersection between transnational histories and border studies. How have borders interrupted the transnational flow of people, things and ideas? How have material and imaginative borders been overcome? In what ways can thinking with and across borders shed new light on the people and process of the past? How have the complexities of these transnational histories been told and represented through film, photography, testimony, literature and in galleries, archives, and museums?

The conference begins on Sunday 13 February, 2022 with a public program. Events on Sunday and any related costs are still to be confirmed.

The conference fees are for the academic program on Monday 14 February and Tuesday 15 February, and include AAJS annual membership. In-person attendance includes catering.