This workshop is organized within the framework of the Volkswagen Momentum Fellowship Programme “From Pre-Modern to Modern Perspectives in Judaic Studies,” which seeks to bridge the traditionally segmented fields of pre-modern and modern Jewish history in the Near East through an integrated, interdisciplinary approach. By encouraging the study of Jewish histories across temporal boundaries, the programme highlights the mutual entanglement of pre-modern developments and modern contexts.
In this spirit, the workshop brings together scholars working across different media, geographies, and methodological approaches to explore how Jewish pasts beyond Europe are narrated, mediated, and transformed into cultural heritage. Particular attention is given to challenging Eurocentric and Ashkenazi-centered paradigms in Judaic Studies by foregrounding Jewish cultural production in Arabic-speaking and other non-European contexts.
Moving from textual and historical analysis to sound archives, visual practices, and participatory methods, the program examines how meanings of the past are negotiated in relation to present-day political, social, and cultural contexts. Cultural production, historical narratives, and heritage practices emerge here as key sites in which competing understandings of the past are articulated and contested.
The workshop is structured in three parts. The opening day introduces different modes of narrating the past across media and disciplines, framing key questions about authority, representation, and cultural translation. The following two-day masterclass led by Rudy Kisler focuses on the politics and semiotics of cultural heritage, combining theoretical reflection with participatory methods such as photovoice. The final day turns to contemporary artistic practices in the exhibition “Yalla: Arab-Jewish Encounters” at the Jewish Museum Munich, where participants reflect on how these questions are negotiated in curatorial and visual form.
Program
June 9, 2026
9:30 Registration
9:45 – 10:00 Introduction with Ronny Vollandt (LMU) and Marina Shcherbakova (LMU)
10:00 – 12:30 Narrating the Past Across Media
Claire Leibovich (Durham University)
Jacqueline Kahanoff’s Haggadah: Political Imagination and the Retelling of Biblical Stories in the Twentieth-Century Levant
Alexandra Birch (Columbia University)
“Let this be our Renaissance!”: Reconsidering Holocaust Evacuation to Soviet Central Asia in Jewish Intellectual History
Christopher Silver (McGill University)
Songs of the Land: Recording Trials and Tribulations in Arabophone Israel
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 15:00 Discussion “From Narrative to Heritage: Scales, Media, and Authority”. Moderated by Joshua Krug (Independent Scholar)
How do cultural narratives become recognized as heritage? Which actors, media, and infrastructures shape this transition? And what forms of authority, inclusion, or exclusion emerge in the process?
16:00 Lecture with Avner Ofrath (LMU)
Judeo-Arabic Writing and the Question of Vernacular Modernity
June 10, 2026
Masterclass with Rudy Kisler (LMU)
Past Values: Heritage, Power, and Ethics
Read the full masterclass description
10:00 – 13:00 Masterclass I: Concepts and Approaches
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 16:00 Masterclass II: Photovoice and Participatory Methods
June 11, 2026
10:00 – 13:00 Masterclass III: Imagining a New Jewish Heritage
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
16:00 Lecture with Rudy Kisler (LMU)
Intersecting Heritages: The case of the Bir’am/Bar’am in Israel/Palestine
June 12, 2026
10:00 – 11:00 Guided tour through the exhibition “Yalla: Arab-Jewish Encounters” at the Jewish Museum Munich with Fabio Ioppolo (LMU)
11:30 – 12:30 Discussion with the curator Sapir van Abel (Jewish Museum Munich)
Registration open till June 6, 2026, m.shcherbakova@lmu.de.
