The Department of Jewish Studies is proud to present many exciting guest speakers and events throughout the year. Please consult the list below.Ěý
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Upcoming Events
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Sonic Heritage Diversity: The Songs of Middle Eastern and North African Jews in Montreal
SSHRC IDG Archives Workshop
- Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2025
- Time: 9:30 am – 3:00 pm
- Location: 91şÚÁĎÍř
By invitation.
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Department of Jewish Studies Welcome Event (2025-2026 Academic Year)
In partnership with JSSA and Nu Magazine
- Date: Thursday, September 4, 2025
- Time: 5:30 – 7:00 pm
- Location: Arts 160
- RSVP:
An opportunity to learn about the Department of Jewish Studies, to launch a year of teaching, events, and research, and to gather and reconnect. Food and drink will be served.
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Department of Jewish Studies Film Screening with Director Cléo Cohen
Que Dieu te protège (May God Be with You, dir. Cléo Cohen, France, 2021)
- Date: Monday, September 8, 2025
- Time: 2:30 – 5:00 pm
- Location:ĚýPeel 3475 Screening Room
- Limited seating, RSVP required:
Cléo Cohen’s directorial debut is an investigation of her identity as the granddaughter of Jewish Arabs who at some point in the past emigrated from Tunisia and Algeria to France. In an intimate setting, Cohen questions her grandparents in front of the camera about the course their lives have taken. Are they more attached to Judaism or to their Arab origin? What do they think of their current host country, France, the former colonial power? Do they feel African or European? And how do they expect their descendants to form their own identity? Their answers are sometimes crystal clear, sometimes more cryptic. In between interviews, Cohen looks to the work of Albert Memmi (1920-2020), a French-Tunisian writer of Jewish origin. The conversations with Cohen provoke introspection among members of both the older and younger generation. At the same time, this personal quest reflects the complexity of a history that brings together colonialism, anti-Semitism and racism, as well as religious, cultural and political issues.
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“The Jewish Maghreb: Experiences in Greater Paris since 1981”
with Sami Everett (Iméra Institute for Advanced Study of Aix-Marseille University)
Part of the Jewish Studies Seminar series
- Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2025
- Time: 4:00 – 6:00 pm
- Location: Leacock 738
- RSVP:
This talk presents multiple case studies examining journeys of return among Algerian Jewish populations and their descendants. It likewise explores how these physical and metaphorical voyages illuminate complex relationships with homeland, memory, and identification.
Samuel Sami Everett is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton and the Iméra Institute for Advanced Study of Aix-Marseille University. He is a cultural anthropologist specializing in the historical-colonial and spatial-political dimensions of North African Jewish identification.
Coffee, tea, and pastries will be served.
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The Levites Annual Lecture, 2025:
“Amateur Films and Sephardi Joy: A Global Spin”
with Sarah Abrevaya Stein (UCLA)
Presented by the Department of Jewish Studies
- Date: Monday, September 15, 2025
- Time: 5:30 – 7:00 pm
- Location: Thompson House Ballroom (3650 McTavish Street)
- RSVP required:
This talk explores family photographs and amateur films of Sephardi communities as a springboard from which to dive deeply into the everyday lives of southeastern European Jewish children, women, and men before the Holocaust. Scattered in private hands and a few archives around the world, family films capture Sephardi Jews living before their near-total extermination—and offer a moving and intimate glimpse of a lost milieu. In this presentation, Stein thinks about amateur film and photography as sites of interaction, shaped by intimate relationships between photographer and subject, which offer a unique “archive of joy” for the Sephardi world. Our site of entry is Ottoman Monastir [current day Bitola in the Republic of North Macedonia], a city that has been Ottoman, Serbian, Bulgarian, Yugoslavian, German, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and North Macedonian over the last 120 years.
Sarah Abrevaya Stein is Distinguished Professor of History and Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA. She is the author or editor of ten books, including, most recently, Wartime North Africa: a Documentary History, 1934-1950 (Stanford University Press, co-authored with Aomar Boum, granted the Best Historical Materials award by the American Library Association (2023) and AJL Judaica Reference Award by the Association for Jewish Libraries (2023), and Family Papers, a Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux 2019), named a Best Book of 2019 by The Economist and an Editor’s Choice Book by the New York Times Book Review. She is recipient of the 2025 Salo W. and Jeanette M. Senior Scholar Award for Scholarly Excellence in Research on the Jewish Experience from the University of Vienna, the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and multiple National Jewish Book Awards, Stein lives and surfs in Santa Monica, CA.
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“Hasidic Women, the Arts, and the Digital Paradox”
with Jessica Roda (Georgetown University)
Part of the Jewish Studies Seminar series
- Date: Monday, October 27, 2025
- Time: 4:00 – 6:00 pm
- Location: Leacock 738
- RSVP: Ěý
Have you had a glimpse of the mesmerizing music videos of ultra-Orthodox women celebrities like Bracha Jaffe or Devorah Schwartz, captivating over half a million viewers on YouTube? Or the myriad films and Yiddish plays crafted by Hasidic girls in Montreal and New York? Probably not.
In this talk, Jessica Roda offers a rare entry into these hidden artistic worlds. Drawing on her unique work, the first translocal ethnography of Hasidic women in North America, who mobilize the arts to transform religion, Roda introduces the audience to a world rarely visible to outsiders. She explores how women artists, whether still part of the ultra-Orthodox community or navigating complex ties to it, engage in music, dance, and film online and on-site to challenge expectations and reshape the image of Hasidicness. As an active observer and participant, Roda brings singular insight into these private feminine spaces and shows how their artistic expressions push us to think about Hasidism beyond the local and the traditional. Much like in mainstream society, celebrity status is rare, but stars like the above are household names in these circles, and their influence on Jewish music and culture is wide-reaching.
Jessica Roda is an associate professor of Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University. She is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist trained between Europe and North America, whose research explores music, religion, cultural heritage, gender, health, and media. She is the author of Se Réinventer au Présent (PUR, 2018) and For Women and Girls Only (NYU, 2024), and has published over twenty scholarly articles, as well as an edited volume and a special issue of an academic journal. Roda has received numerous fellowships and awards for her work, notably the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Special Interest Group for Jewish Music Book Award for For Women and Girls Only. She is currently working on a new project exploring practices of healing and spirituality that mobilize psychedelics in comparative settings, both within and beyond the Jewish Orthodox world.
Beyond academia, Roda is also a trained pianist, flutist, and modern-jazz dancer (City of Paris Conservatory). She grew up in French Guiana, a formative experience that continues to shape her perspective as a person, educator, and anthropologist.
Coffee, tea, and pastries will be served.
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“Schmatte Week Vs. Rosh Hashanah: The Influence of Ruth Finley's Fashion Calendar”
with Natalie Nudell (Fashion Institute of Technology)
Part of the Jewish Studies Seminar series
- Date: Monday, November 3, 2025
- Time: 11:30 am – 1:00 pm
- Location:ĚýLEA 927
- RSVP:
Natalie Nudell will discuss her research on the history of the 20th century American fashion and creative industries and her recent monograph In American Fashion, Ruth Finley's Fashion Calendar (Bloomsbury, 2024). The talk will also present the grant-funded and open-source Fashion Calendar Research Database, a digitization and digital humanities project that was launched by The Fashion Institute of Technology in 2023.
Natalie Nudell is a fashion and textile historian with a research focus on the 20th century American fashion industry centered on Fashion Calendar, labor, and digital humanities. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the History of Art Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, where she is also the Director of the Fashion Calendar Research Database. Nudell wrote and produced the documentary "Calendar Girl," (2020) now available on iTunes, Amazon and Tubi. Her book, In American Fashion: Ruth Finley’s Fashion Calendar, was published by Bloomsbury Press in September, 2024. She is an associate editor of the Fashion Studies Journal and a founding member of the Fashion Studies Alliance. Nudell holds an MA in Visual Culture and Costume Studies from NYU and a BA in History from Concordia University.
Coffee, tea, and pastries will be served.
Ěý
“Hasidic Women, the Arts, and the Digital Paradox”
with Jessica Roda (Georgetown University)
Part of the Jewish Studies Seminar series
- Date: Monday, October 27, 2025
- Time: 4:00 – 6:00 pm
- Location: Leacock 738
- RSVP:
Have you had a glimpse of the mesmerizing music videos of ultra-Orthodox women celebrities like Bracha Jaffe or Devorah Schwartz, captivating over half a million viewers on YouTube? Or the myriad films and Yiddish plays crafted by Hasidic girls in Montreal and New York? Probably not.
In this talk, Jessica Roda offers a rare entry into these hidden artistic worlds. Drawing on her unique work, the first translocal ethnography of Hasidic women in North America, who mobilize the arts to transform religion, Roda introduces the audience to a world rarely visible to outsiders. She explores how women artists, whether still part of the ultra-Orthodox community or navigating complex ties to it, engage in music, dance, and film online and on-site to challenge expectations and reshape the image of Hasidicness. As an active observer and participant, Roda brings singular insight into these private feminine spaces and shows how their artistic expressions push us to think about Hasidism beyond the local and the traditional. Much like in mainstream society, celebrity status is rare, but stars like the above are household names in these circles, and their influence on Jewish music and culture is wide-reaching.
Jessica Roda is an associate professor of Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University. She is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist trained between Europe and North America, whose research explores music, religion, cultural heritage, gender, health, and media. She is the author of Se Réinventer au Présent (PUR, 2018) and For Women and Girls Only (NYU, 2024), and has published over twenty scholarly articles, as well as an edited volume and a special issue of an academic journal. Roda has received numerous fellowships and awards for her work, notably the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Special Interest Group for Jewish Music Book Award for For Women and Girls Only. She is currently working on a new project exploring practices of healing and spirituality that mobilize psychedelics in comparative settings, both within and beyond the Jewish Orthodox world.
Beyond academia, Roda is also a trained pianist, flutist, and modern-jazz dancer (City of Paris Conservatory). She grew up in French Guiana, a formative experience that continues to shape her perspective as a person, educator, and anthropologist.
Coffee, tea, and pastries will be served.
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“More Than Friends: Muslim-Jewish Intimacy in Algerian Music”
with Jonathan Glasser (William & Mary)
- Date: Monday, November 17, 2025
- Time:Ěý4:00Ěý– 6:00 pm
- Location:ĚýTBA
- RSVP:
Music is a major site for remembering the Jewish presence in Algeria, and in many ways works against dominant discourses of Muslim-Jewish conflict and Jewish outsider status. But digging deeper uncovers multiple ways to read Muslim-Jewish intimacy around music, some of which edge into rivalry, hierarchy, and difference. This talk weighs these multiple interpretations, drawing on historical archives and contemporary memory in Algeria and in France.
Jonathan Glasser is Associate Professor of Anthropology at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the author of The Lost Paradise: Andalusi Music in Urban North Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2016), which won the L. Carl Brown Book Prize from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies and a Mahmoud Guettat International Prize in Musicology from the Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs. His journal articles have appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, American Ethnologist, Anthropological Quarterly, ±á±đ˛ő±čĂ©°ůľ±˛ő-°Ő˛ąłľłÜ»ĺ˛ą, and Turath. Glasser recently completed a book manuscript titled More Than Friends: Muslim-Jewish Intimacy in Algerian Music.