Jews on the Move: Particularist Universality in Modern Cosmopolitanist Thought

Jews on the Move: Particularist Universality in Modern Cosmopolitanist Thought
International Conference, Leo Baeck Institute London, Queen Mary University of London

Organised by Cathy Gelbin (University of Manchester) and Sander L. Gilman (Emory University)

11-12 May 2014

The AHRC-funded conference on Cosmopolitanism and the Jews will look at the image and participation of Jews in the construction of modern cosmopolitanist thought. Cosmopolitanism has recently become a keyword in envisioning productive types of inclusivity and diversity in the West (e.g. Cohen 1992, Appiah 1998 and Beck 2006). From early modernity onwards, Jews represented the paradigm of the cosmopolitan. They were seen as a people unfettered by Herder’s newly evolving idea of national borders as natural and defined by language. German-speaking Jews both epitomized the figure of the cosmopolitan and themselves contributed a rich body of literary and theoretical writing on this concept. Today, Jews have largely vanished from the debate about cosmopolitanism yet remain the palimpsest of academic discourse about the cosmopolitan. While the issue of the cosmopolitan has returned with a vengeance to the social sciences and to the political arena (in the shape of debates about the movement of people and their urbanisation) little attention has been given to when and how this concept evolved.

Examining the case of German-speaking Jews in international perspective, the two-day event explores how Jews were and are made to function as the litmus test of Kant’s and Fichte’s dialectic of particularist universality, which fuelled cosmopolitanist ideas. Leading scholars in the field will situate selected comparative case studies from Europe, the United States and the Middle East within the broader field of cosmopolitanism studies.

Registration for this event is free, but please register with Carina Chitayat, [email protected] mailto:[email protected]>, to secure your place and obtain all further information.



PROGRAMME

SUNDAY, 11 MAY 2014

SESSION I, 14.00-15.00
Prof. Robert Fine(Warwick University), Keynote lecture: The Two Faces of Universalism: Emancipation and the Jewish Question

SESSION II, 15.00-16.30
Prof. Sander Gilman (Emory University), Aliens vs. Predators: Cosmopolitan Jews vs. Jewish Nomads
Prof. Saskia Sassen (Columbia University), tbc

Coffee break, 16.30-17.00

SESSION III, 17.00-18.30
Ruth Novaczek (London), The New World, Diaspora and 21st- Century Cosmopolitanism
Followed by a screening of Ruth Novaczek’s new film, The New World

DINNER, 19.00

MONDAY, 12 MAY 2014

SESSION IV, 9.00-10.30
Prof. Michael Keith (University of Oxford), The Parochially Global Cosmopolitan
Prof. Mica Nava (University of East London), Jews and Other Others: Cosmopolitan or Not?

Coffee break, 10.30-11.00

SESSION V, 11.00-12.30
Wayne Cristaudo (Charles Darwin University Northern Territory Australia), Revolutions, World Wars and the Continuing Process of Redemptive Cosmopolitanism
Dr. Ilse Lazaroms (Central European University), Hotel Patriots or Permanent Strangers? Joseph Roth, Transitory Lives, and the Literatures of Interwar Central Europe



Lunch, 13.00-14.00



SESSION VI, 14.00-15.30

Prof. Philip Spencer (Kingston University, London), Marxism, Cosmopolitanism and the Jews
Dr. Cathy Gelbin (University of Manchester), Rootless Cosmopolitans: East Germany and the Stalinist Persecutions of Jews


Coffee break, 15.30-16.00



SESSION VII, 16.00-17.30

Dr. Xun Zhou (University of Essex), Being Jewish and Cosmopolitan: a Jewish experience in Hong Kong
Dr Claire Sutherland (Durham University), Essential Outsiders and the Search for Cosmopolitan Citizenship


Closing statements, 17.30-18.00