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Program – PDF Version

Alterity and Its Alternatives:

A Conference on Gender and Judaism in Honor of Judith Baskin

 

Tuesday, May 23

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

 

9:00-10:30                  In Her Voice: Female Jewish Writers

                                    Moderator: Anne Kreps – University of Oregon

 

Gantt Gurley – University of Oregon

“The Other Goldschmidt: Ragnhild and Alleotheta”

Naomi Sokoloff – University of Washington

“Modern Women Poets and the Kaddish: Teaching Jewish Literature as World Literature”

Monique Balbuena – University of Oregon

“From tHEiR mouths: Contemporary Women Poets Write in Ladino”

 

11:00-12:30                Gender, Transition, and Sexual Ambiguity

                                    Moderator: Federica Francesconi – College of Idaho

 

Kevin Osterloh – Oregon State University

“The Diplomatic Discourse of Judean Masculinity: Intra-Jewish Relations in the Days of Hyrcanus I”

David Hollenberg – University of Oregon

“Gender Anxiety or Intellectual Virtuosity?  Discussions of the khunthā mushkil (sexually ambiguous adult) in classical Islamic jurisprudence.”

Howard Tzvi Adelman – Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

“Concerning a Woman Who Became a Man and a Man who Became a Woman”

 

2:00-3:30                    Women and the Law

            Moderator: Jeffrey Librett – University of Oregon

 

Tal Ilan – Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Judaistik

“A Feminist Commentary on Esther in Tractate Hullin”

Rena Lauer – Oregon State University

“Real and Imagined Jewish Women in Late Medieval Crete”

Federica Francesconi – College of Idaho

“Women’s Life, Rabbinical Attitudes and Gendered Spaces in Early Modern Italy”

 

Wednesday, May 24

Knight Library Browsing Room

 

9:00-10:30                  Re-Depicting the Bible: Gardens, Women, and Representation

                                    Moderator: Evlyn Gould – University of Oregon

 

Deborah Green – University of Oregon

“Stuck in the Middle: The Motif of the Vulnerable Female in the Garden”

Kenneth Helphand – University of Oregon

“My garden, my sister, my bride.”

Susan Niditch – Amherst College

“The Iron Fist in the Velvet Glove: Jael, Judith, and Beyond”

 

11:00-12:30                The Feminist Lens: Using the Methods of Judith Baskin

                                    Moderator: David Hollenberg – University of Oregon

 

Gail Labovitz – American Jewish University, Los Angeles

“Lest Someone Else Precede Him: Bavli Mo’ed Qatan 18b and Rabbinic Discourse on the Divine Role in Marital Matches”

Rebecca Winer – Villanova University

“Wet nurses, Gender, and Judaism in Medieval Spain and Southern France”

Anne Kreps – University of Oregon

“Midrashic Women, Gnostic Women: Some Biological Considerations”

 

2:00-3:30                    Witnessing the 20th Century

                                    Moderator: Evlyn Gould – University of Oregon

 

Mark Raider – University of Cincinnati

“The Political Theology of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise”

Gina Hermann – University of Oregon

“Jewish women at Ravensbruck through the eyes of political prisoners”

Sara Horowitz – York University, Toronto

“Midrash and Gender in Holocaust Testimony”

Jeffrey Librett – University of Oregon

“Remarks on Freud’s ‘The Moses of Michelangelo’”  

 

7:30 p.m.        Judith Baskin – University of Oregon

Ford Alumni Ballroom

“Distinguishing Egg White from Semen: Rabbinic Forensics and the Medieval Afterlives of a Talmudic Passage”

A passage in Babylonian Talmud Gittin 57a discusses a scientific test the Rabbis used to clear a woman falsely accused of adultery. This talk reveals the larger context of that accusation and explores references to this forensic technique in medieval Jewish and Muslim sources.