Conference: Jews and Muslims in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union

Munich, June 20th/21st

Jews and Muslims shared the experience of living in the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union. Both of these groups were profoundly influenced by the policies of these multiethnic and multireligious states. The conference brought together specialists from both fields to allow a comparative approach to Jewish and Muslim experiences from the 1860s until the 1920s. By taking into account the imperial as well as the early Soviet period it shows continuities and changes between the Petersburg Empire and its successor state.

Concept: Martin Schulze Wessel (Chair of Eastern European History / LMU Munich), Michael Brenner (Chair of Jewish History and Culture / LMU Munich), Franziska Davies (Assistant Lecturer of Eastern European History/ LMU Munich)

Organization: International Research Training Group "Religious Cultures in 19th and 20th Century Europe" (LMU Munich, Charles University in Prague)

June, 20th/21st 2013, Historisches Kolleg Munich

Thursday, June 20th

13.00-14.00 Martin Schulze Wessel (LMU Munich)
Opening remarks

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern (Northwestern University, Evanston):
Jewish Apples and Muslim Oranges in the Russian Basket: Options and Limits of a Comparative Approach

14.30-15.00
Coffee Break

15.00-17.30
Panel I: Jews and Muslims and their Encounter with the Imperial and Soviet States
Chair: Christoph Neumann (LMU München)

Vladimir Levin (Hebrew University, Jerusalem):
Common Problems, Different Solutions: Jewish and Muslims Politics in Late Imperial Russia

Franziska Davies (LMU Munich):
Jews and Muslims as Soldiers of the Tsar: The Army and the Challenge of Difference

David Schick (LMU Munich):The Jews in the Economic Policy of the Russian Empire: The Example of Odessa (1855-1894)

20.00 Evening Lecture:
Introduction: Michael Brenner (LMU Munich)

Michael Stanislawski (Columbia University, New York):
The Jewish and Muslim Enlightenments in Russia: A Comparison

Friday, June, 21st

9.30-12.00
Panel II: Depicting Difference: Visual and Discursive Representations of Jews and Muslims in Late Imperial Russia and the Early Soviet Union
Chair: Heléna Tóth (LMU Munich)

Yvonne Kleinmann (University of Leipzig):
The Power of Documentation: Ethnographic Representations of Jews and Muslims in the Late Russian Empire

David Shneer (University of Colorado, Boulder):
Documenting the Ambivalent Empire: Soviet Jewish Photographers in Birobidzhan and the Soviet East

12.00-13.00   
Lunch

13.00-16.00   
Panel III: The Making of National and Religious Identities
Chair: Guido Hausmann (LMU Munich)

Ellie Schainker (Emory University, Atlanta):
A View of the Confessional State from Below: Converts from Judaism and Confessional Choice in Nineteenth-Century Imperial Russia

David E. Fishman (Jewish Theological Seminary, New York):
Yiddish and the Formation of a Secular Jewish National Identity in Czarist Russia

Adeeb Khalid (Carleton College, Minnesota):
From Muslim Anticlericalism to Soviet Atheism: The Uzbek intelligentsia through the Revolution, 1917-1929

Michael Khodarkovsky (Loyola University, Chicago):
"Who Are We And Why?" Imperial, Islamic, and Ethnic Identities in the Russian Empire

16.00 Coffee

Here you can download the program as a PDF file (232 KB) and the poster as a PDF file (221KB).

For the Call for Papers (119 KB) please click here.

Registration is requested until June, 13th to the following email address: conferencejam@lrz.uni-muenchen.de