CALL FOR PAPERS: Between East and West: Jewish Culture and Nationalism in Shanghai
When: Sept. 11-13, 2024
Where: Shanghai
Submission Deadline: June 1, 2024
Notification: July 1, 2024
During the first half of the twentieth century, members of the Jewish national movement reimagined Jewish identity in various ways, with influences received and transmitted within different cultural contexts across the globe. While the range of influences and identities was robust, the stress in the current historiographical picture is on Western and Westernizing influences, while Asian influences, together with Jewish interest in, and even longed-for attachment to “The East” and “Eastern” cultures, has received comparatively little attention.
SIGNAL Group and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences invites scholars and researchers from around the world to submit proposals for participation in a pioneering academic workshop and conference in Shanghai to take place in Sept. 2024, that will explore Shanghai’s Jewish communities in Shanghai and other cities in China, with a special emphasis on the Baghdadi Jewish community of Shanghai and its remarkable newspaper, Israel’s Messenger (IM), published from 1904-41. Shanghai’s Baghdadi Jewish community secured support for the Jewish national movement in the Land of Israel from the father of modern Chinese nationalism, Sun Yat Sen, while IM brought Jewish national identity into dialogue with the aspirational vision of Asian identity that was articulated by the Nobel Prize winning poet and polymath, Rabindranth Tagore. The Baghdadi Jewish activity was marked by the vibrant and cosmopolitan environment of early twentieth-century Shanghai, and constituted a unique voice in that multi-vocal and multifaceted city which has yet to receive the scholarly attention that it deserves.
Many of these stories and subjects constitute important meeting points between Israel Studies, Jewish Studies, Chinese Studies, Shanghai Studies, Media Studies and more.
- Jewish networks and the Jewish community of Shanghai
- Jewish-Chinese collaborations in Shanghai
- Silas Hardoon and the boundaries of cultural assimilation in Shanghai
- The story behind Sun Yat Sen’s 1920 letter, published in IM, in support of the Jewish nationalmovement, and implications for Jewish and Chinese nationalism
- Madame Sun Yat Sen’s anti-Nazi activism, reported in the pages of IM but absent from almost all her biographies
- The history of Israel’s Messenger.
- IMs role in Jewish nationalist diplomacy across South and East Asia
- IM as a platform for advancing Classic Sephardic Judaism
- Cross-cultural and multireligious communication in IM
- The idea of “Asia” in the pages of IM and in Zionism broadly conceived
- R’ Dr. Ariel Bension’s Cultural Activities in Shanghai and his meeting with Rabindranath Tagore
Given the newness of these topics and the relative lack of previous scholarly work on them, the conference will also function as a workshop, with opportunities for scholars from very different scholarly backgrounds to learn from one another, and to study events and texts rarely included within the purview of any of the relevant fields and disciplines.
A central goal of the conference will be to publish papers based on the proceedings in what will be a pioneering volume.
Scholars and researchers are invited to submit a 250 word abstract of their proposed presentation by June 1st to submissions@sino-israel.org. Notification will be sent by July 1st.
Academic Committee:
Prof. WANG Jian (SASS)
Prof. Meron Medzini, Emeritus (Heb. Univ.) Prof. WANG Shuming (SASS)
Prof. Arieh Saposnik (BGU)
Prof. SONG Lihong (SASS)
Dr. Aryeh Tepper (BGU & SIGNAL)
Prof. XIA Yun (SASS)
Dr. Ori Goldberg (SIGNAL)