Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2017 Early Modern Workshop's theme was "Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period." The workshop focused on the creation, preservation, organization, collection, translation, and use of records, evidence, and information. It also examined continuities and change between chronological periods --including medieval and modern, and different cultures and settings--Jewish and non-Jewish. Among themes addressed were: official record keeping, personal records, collection and organization of information.

Even more than in our previous topic--history of emotions/emotions in history--there is such an abundance of work on records, and record keeping in non-Jewish historiography, but exceedingly little on Jewish record keeping.

The workshop was a culmination of a year of reading and discussions, a bibliography of the readings is appended at the end of the workshop’s reader.

The keynote speaker was Randolph Head, who spoke of “Regimes of Archival Authenticity: Treasuries, Sovereigns and Communities in The Formation and Ordering of Archival Records since The Middle Ages.”

The 2017 EMW was co-sponsored by:

• American Academy of Jewish Research,
• Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University,
• Center for Jewish Studies at CUNY-Graduate Center,
• Jewish Studies at Fordham University, and
• Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at the UNC-Chapel Hill.

Members of the 2017 organizing committee:
Francesca Bregoli, CUNY, Queens College, and Graduate Center
Elisheva Carlebach, Columbia University
Debra Glasberg, Columbia University
Joshua Teplitsky, SUNY Stony Brook
Magda Teter, Fordham University