!שלום־עליכם 欢迎! 欢迎! Welcome!
The Sino-Judaic Institute has been a pioneer in the field of Chinese-Jewish relations for over 30 years. We are a virtual institute, based in the United States, but with members the world over. We offer this website as a resource to all who are curious about various aspects of Chinese-Jewish relations and want to learn more. SJI is a membership organization. We welcome your participation and involvement.
Our fields of work include:
- The study of the ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng, where Jews have been living now for over a millennium, and assisting the Kaifeng Jewish descendants to reconnect with their cultural heritage as appropriate.
- The study of Jewish life in Shanghai, Harbin, Tianjin, Hong Kong and elsewhere in the 19th and 20th centuries.
- The study of cross-cultural issues such as literary influences, comparative diasporas, religion, intermarriage and family matters, etc.
- The support of Jewish Studies programs in China and fostering scholarship in this field.
- Promotion of tourism to Kaifeng and other cities and to make current exhibits on the Jews of China more accessible to the public.
- Publicaton of Points East, a journal that comes out three times a year, and Sino-Judaica, an occasional scholarly publication.
CFP: Jews and Whiteness in Colonial Spaces (10-11 June 2020, SOAS, London)
This workshop at the SOAS Centre for Jewish Studies, on 10-11 June 2020, will explore new thinking on race in the discussion of Jews and colonialism, primarily in Asia and Africa. The relation of Jews and whiteness has seen keen academic debate in North America, where Jews are discussed alongside other peripheral groups. The colonial contexts of Asia and Africa raise different questions, but the framework of whiteness is relatively rare to come by in studies of Jews and race in these contexts, despite ongoing debate on relations between colonialism and Jews.
This workshop will bring together scholars who work on Jews and race in colonial and post-colonial spaces to reflect on the framework of whiteness, its explanatory potential, and its limitations. How, and to what extent, can “whiteness” help us to analyze racialization of Jews under colonialism and its aftermath? How do Jews respond to, operate against or are coopted by this “whiteness”?
Our call for papers is for all scholars working on these topics, but we are primarily interested in Asian and African contexts, including but not limited to, French, Spanish and Italian ruled North Africa; Palestine/Israel; Ethiopia, South Africa, British ruled India and China. This interdisciplinary workshop aims to bring together scholars of the humanities and social sciences, for a historically-informed discussion, and we welcome work-in-progress contributions, on topics such as:
1. Jews as colonial settlers: their “suitability”, acculturation, encounter with native population, other settler groups, Imperial powers; “Whiteness” for Zionism, Territorialism
2. The racialization of African Jews in colonial and post-colonial contexts
3. The extension of European citizenship to native Jews in North African under European colonialism, and its effects
4. The racialization of Middle Eastern Jews in circuits of migration during colonial times: e.g. Jewish-Iraqi migrants eastwards - to India, China - and westwards, to the UK
5. The question of “whiteness” for Sephardic/Mizrahi communities in Europe and elsewhere
6. The place of “whiteness” in antisemitism, historical and contemporary, and its relation to colonial and anti-colonial discourses
7. How does the materiality and fluidity of place-making correlate with the operation of whiteness for Jews in such spaces
Please send abstracts of up to 300 words, including contact information and institutional affiliation, by 26th March 2020 to JewsAndWhitenessWorkshop@gmail.com
Organisers will be able to cover some travel expenses for participants.
Organized by Yair Wallach, SOAS (yw11@soas.ac.uk)