A conference organized by religion professor Susannah Heschel examining movements of Jews and Muslims in the modern world, "Transnational Migrations of Identity: Jews, Muslims, and the Modernity Debate," was held Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Heschel said this conference was a chance to look at similarities between the struggles Jews and Muslims have endured in migrating to the west. Heschel noted, among other things, problems with Jewish assimilation into western societies and tensions over an increased Muslim presence in Europe. She also pointed out the difficulty of western nations in reconciling their self-perceived openness and freedom with growing anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment in their countries.
"The shifts in defining Judaism and Islam as a result of the transnational migrations of the modern era have rarely been examined in a comparative context, and only rarely have Judeophobia and Islamophobia been studied together," Heschel said in the conference's opening address. "This conference will begin that comparative effort and intends to foster a discussion that will consider ways in which methodologies and interpretive frameworks might be shared as well as jointly called into question by the work of scholars in both Jewish and Islamic studies."
The conference hosted presentations by 14 academics from Dartmouth and around the world, including Canada, Germany, Morocco, The United States, and Egypt.
While most of the presentations focused on only Jewish or only Muslim issues, several used their presentations to compare the experiences of both peoples. Sander Gilman, a historian who teaches at Emory University, gave the conference's opening address discussing how Jewish migrations to Europe could provide a model to ease Muslim integration. French professor Mary Jean Green closed the conference with a paper which discussed the writing of Muslim and Jewish immigrant memory in France, focusing in particular on Jewish immigrant neighborhoods before and during World War II on the outskirts of Paris, neighborhoods that are now inhabited in large part by immigrants from the former French North Africa.
After each presentation, the academics took questions and debated with the other academics present. These conversations also were continued over dinners and breaks between presentations. Because of this intense workshop format, Heschel said that "everyone got involved, right from the beginning [of the conference]."
The conference, held in Rockefeller 2 and Haldeman 125, was the last in a four-part series funded in large part by a grant from the Ford Foundation given to Heschel. She said that the grant is used to "stimulate new areas of research, particularly in ways that can overcome contemporary political tensions and foster greater collegiality across disciplines within the academy and, hopefully, with social and government policy implications to follow."
In the conferences, Heschel brought together scholars in Jewish and Islamic studies, to examine and discuss different aspects of both fields. Past conferences have discussed issues of sexuality and feminism in Judaism and Islam, orientalism and fundamentalism and self-definition and the development of religious meaning.
"The material was new, fresh and interesting," Heschel said after the conference. "[It was] a very nice opportunity to meet people in new fields."
History professor Gene Garthwaite, who moderated two sessions of the conference, saw the conference as a success.
"There was a very interesting mix of people from across the world, at different stages of their careers," Garthwaite said. "This conference really did click, and it worked beautifully."
