Jan 18, 12 PM: "A Critical History of Zionism and Disability" with Sarah Imhoff
The UC Davis Department of Religious Studies and the Jewish Studies Program invite you to "A Critical History of Zionism and Disability" with Sarah Imhoff, Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University on Thursday, January 18, 2023 at 12 noon in Garrison Room, MU. Vegetarian lunch will be served.
Abstract: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Zionist movement often conceived of a Jewish state as a place that would be a safe haven for all Jews. But it also promoted an image of the New Jew—strong, able-bodied, and healthy. This presentation discusses how Zionist leaders in the US, Europe, and Mandate Palestine discussed disability, primarily as a criterion for excluding immigrants to the Yishuv (Jewish settlements in Mandate Palestine) or as an economic or health problem to be addressed. It also notes how some Zionists—some of whom were themselves disabled—offered alternative ways of thinking about disability.
Sarah Imhoff is Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. She writes about religion and the body with a particular interest in gender, sexuality, disability, and American religion, as well as maintaining a research specialty in religion and law. She is author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017) and The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist (Duke University Press, 2022). She is the founding co-editor of the journal American Religion.
Please join us!