OXON-OVIS: Oxford Virtual International Symposium
March 6-7-8 (Week 8, Hilary term)
Organizer: Emily Rose, Oxford: <profemilyrose@hotmail.com>. As of 8 Oct <em.rose@ames.ox.ac.uk>
Abstract:
This symposium will examine the experiences, roles, and status of Jews in seventeenth-century Britain and its empire, recontextualizing these often-ignored and misunderstood individuals and communities through a multi-faceted exploration of their linguistic, social, and colonial contexts.
The traditional historical narrative of Jews in seventeenth-century Britain is familiar: there were no Jews in Britain until Cromwell invited foreign merchants to come in 1656 after the now-celebrated Whitehall conference, and after that there was an unbroken trajectory of toleration and integration. The traditional literary narrative is much less congratulatory, as suggested by the stereotypes depicted on stage, in caricatures and in fiction. The reality is more complicated than either narrative suggests, a subject the symposium will explore by considering English-speaking Jews and individuals of Jewish heritage (of various religious and national identities) who lived and worked not only in the British Isles but also around the early modern British empire.
During the seventeenth century, Jews can be found providing coffee to students in Oxford, advising Cromwell, sailing with the crew on the Western Design, matchmaking for King Charles II, planting in Surinam, marketing coral in London, opening small shops in Barbados, teaching Hebrew to scholars in Cambridge, paying taxes in Boston, building synagogues in British Tangiers, translating for English sailors in China, and raising a child in Chennai with the English governor Elihu Yale. The symposium will address the diversity of their experiences, delving into the nature of toleration, religious identities, comparative and common law, discriminatory taxation, ethnic practices and differences, colonialism, slavery, intermarriage, and institutional innovations. The workshops will pay particular attention to how the situations of Jews were affected by boundaries of period, geographic setting, and family and professional networks (real or imagined).
In workshop sessions over three days, scheduled to engage a diverse collection of scholars from different time zones around the world, topics the symposium will consider include:
-- “The Middle Period” of Anglo-Jewish history (1290-1656).
-- Jews in colonies Britain established (Barbados, Surinam, Madras, Rhode Island).
-- Jews in colonies Britain conquered or were ceded (New Amsterdam, Jamaica, Bombay, Tangiers)
-- Individual family and commercial networks
-- Jews in literature and intellectual life (popular imagery and Hebrew scholarship).
-- Jews throughout the empire after the Restoration.
An invited keynote address may be offered as a hybrid event for the public and a culminating Roundtable on the final day will address the presence and characterization of Jews in popular British historical writing up to the present.
By 15 October
Please respond to Emily Rose (see above for email addresses) by letting us know if you would like to deliver a 20-minute paper
-on new research
-reframing your previous work
Or if you would be willing to
-comment on a session,
-participate in a Roundtable
Or you have other suggestions about the structure or format for the first symposium of this kind.
Pre-circulated material will include
- maps, timeline, bibliography, very brief abstracts.