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What's New in Jewish Studies, 2022-2023

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 15:11:11 +0000

What's New in Jewish Studies, 2022-2023 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/22/2022 - 09:11

As we enter the 2022-2023 academic year, we are pleased to announce a variety of new developments in the Program in Jewish Studies at 91��ý.

We are very excited to welcome two new members to Jewish Studies, Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, the new Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, and Angela Watts, our new Manager of Finance and Business Operations.

Gregg Drinkwater has been named one of the inaugural recipients of the Association for Jewish Studies’s new Contingent Faculty and Independent Scholar Research Grants, which will support his project "Prelude to Pinkwashing: Homonationalism, Diaspora, and the Gay Jewish Embrace of Israel.” Prof. Drinkwater has also been appointed Associate Academic Director of the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections.

The Nonbinary Hebrew Project, co-created by Eyal Rivlin, is increasingly being integrated into university curricula across the U.S., as well as language-learning technology platforms, including Language Drops. Read about the Gender Inclusive Hebrew Language Conference, co-organized by Prof. Rivlin this past spring.

Maggie Rosenau is the new Project Manager for Jews of Color: Histories and Futures.

Rebecca Wartell has been selected to be part of a cohort of faculty at the CU Art Museum focused on developing new modes of object-based teaching and experiential learning.

Beverly Weber has been appointed Chair of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures.

Be sure to register for our first fall event: Yiddish Paris: Creating a Jewish Nation Between Two World Wars.

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Message from the Director: COVID-19 Response from the Program in Jewish Studies

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 16:15:19 +0000

Message from the Director: COVID-19 Response from the Program in Jewish Studies Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/20/2020 - 10:15

As we complete our first full week of the “new normal” of online learning and remote work here at the University of Colorado Boulder, I write to you with an offer of support and a message of gratitude. First and foremost, I want to say that the Program in Jewish Studies stands ready to support you in any way that we can, and that I am always available to speak by phone or video. To our students, in particular, I want to say that we know how difficult this period is, and we are here for you. Please let us know if you encounter any issues, ranging from lack of access to WiFi or computing technology to food insecurity to uncertainty about university procedures. We are in close and constant communication with campus leadership, and we will do our best to connect you with the right offices and individuals at CU and get you the resources you need; we are also working closely with our undergraduate advisory board to make sure that we are responsive to any emerging challenges that arise. (For those of you who don’t know it, I also encourage you to visit the university’s COVID-19 site.) We often throw around the term “intellectual community” in academic settings, but that is what we are: a genuine community.

I write, second, to express my profound thanks to our students, faculty, staff, and community partners. Amid the challenges of ever-changing information, new technologies, and social isolation, our courses, internships, and other operations continue, albeit in online form; our events, including a concert with the Conference on World Affairs and lecture with Anschutz’s Center for Bioethics and Humanities, have been put off, but we are looking into the possibility of rescheduling in the future; all in-person spring commencement programs at the university have been cancelled, but we are exploring alternate ways to honor the many accomplishments of our students. All of this is a testimony to the dedication of the diverse members of our community, who have selflessly devoted their time and energy to ensuring that we can continue to fulfill our mission of educating tomorrow’s global citizens and community leaders.

None of us expected the semester to look like this, but I am confident that we, as a Jewish Studies community, will continue to be there for one another. I am so very grateful to each and every one of you, and my (virtual) door is always open.

Sincerely,
Elias Sacks
Director, Program in Jewish Studies
elias.sacks@colorado.edu

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Tyler Lehrer Wins Ray Hauser Award

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 20:07:34 +0000

Tyler Lehrer Wins Ray Hauser Award Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/24/2016 - 14:07

Tyler A. Lehrer, MA candidate in Religious Studies and Outreach and Adminstrative Coordinator for the Program in Jewish Studies, won the Ray Hauser Award from the University of Colorado Graduate School to travel to Sri Lanka to conduct MA thesis research. This award is given in recognition of Ray Hauser, the first Chair of the Graduate School Advisory Council, to fund graduate student research expenses. After his graduation in May, Tyler will be pursuing a PhD in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to continue his investigations into gender and religious history in South and Southeast Asia.

With the Ray Hauser Award, Tyler travelled to Sri Lanka over December 2015 - January 2016 to conduct research for his MA thesis about contested ordinations of Buddhist nuns (bhikkhunīs) in the monastic traditions of South and Southeast Asia. Tyler's research interrogates questions of authority, gender, media, and transnational politics in the Buddhist monastic traditions of Asia. Through his investigation of controversial ordinations of Buddhist nuns in Sri Lanka, Tyler has uncovered surprising confluences between globally-operating Buddhist feminist organizations, gendered nationalist and Islamaphobic rhetoric, and rich media environments for the playing out of disputes about the legality of fully-ordained nuns in contemporary Lankan Buddhist communities. His MA thesis, with the tentative title "Mediating Monasticism: Gender, Media, and Discourse in Sri Lanka's Bhikkhunī Ordination Dispute," argues for a shift in academic focus away from discussions centered around textual records chronicling the Buddha's decision to ordain nuns and why, and toward the wider geopolitical conjunctures, varying influence of feminist thought and financial support, and the rich mediated environments through which the current nuns' ordination dispute in Sri Lanka is brought into more nuanced view.

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Tyler Lehrer Presents at Annual AAR Conference, Prepares for Research in Sri Lanka

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 18:19:48 +0000

Tyler Lehrer Presents at Annual AAR Conference, Prepares for Research in Sri Lanka Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/08/2015 - 11:19

Tyler Lehrer, Outreach & Administrative Coordinator for the Program in Jewish Studies and MA Candidate in Religious Studies, recently presented a paper at the annual American Academy of Religion conference in Atlanta, GA on November 22nd. Tyler's paper, “Reframing Authority: Buddhist Blogging and the Theravāda Bhikkhunī Ordination Dispute” was part of the “Contesting Authority, Reclaiming Traditions: Religion and Gender in Southeast Asia” panel co-sponsored by the Women and Religion and Religion in Southeast Asia sections.

Tyler subsequently defended his MA thesis prospectus in early December and is busy submitting PhD applications and preparing to travel to Sri Lanka to conduct thesis research over winter break.

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