What’s New, What’s Next? Innovative Methods, New Sources, and Paradigm Shifts in Jewish Studies

12-15 October 2020, POLIN Museum, Warsaw

We invite scholars working in Jewish studies to propose panels for the international interdisciplinary conference “What’s New, What’s Next? Innovative Methods, New Sources, and Paradigm Shifts in Jewish Studies.” The aim of the conference is to explore new directions in the study of East and Central European Jews.

At the heart of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is a multimedia narrative exhibition that draws upon the best recent scholarship in a broad range of disciplines. Scholars in Poland, Israel, and North America collaborated on the creation of an open historical narrative that begins in the 10th century and comes forward to the present.

The exhibition raises many of the methodological and theoretical issues central to Jewish studies today and serves as the inspiration for "What’s New, What’s Next? Innovative Methods, New Sources, and Paradigm Shifts in Jewish Studies".

What constitutes Jewish studies today and in which direction should we be heading? Which paradigms are guiding the field today? How are theoretical and methodological developments in the humanities and social sciences shaping Jewish studies? How are scholars working in a broad range of disciplines – history, social sciences, literature, visual and performing arts, and other disciplines – contributing to the field? What are interdisciplinary approaches contributing to the field? What is the impact of studies of Jewish life in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on a wider understanding of world history?

We invite proposals for:

panels that address the conference
posters for a session for PhD students that focuses on methodological issues related to their doctoral dissertations


Deadline for submitting proposals: 30 April 2020

More information on the conference: https://www.polin.pl/en/whats-new-whats-next-2020

Contact: whatsnewconference@polin.pl



The conference is organized within the Global Education Outreach Program.

The conference is supported by Taube Philanthropies, the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland.

The conference is organized by POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in cooperation with the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture–Simon Dubnow, Mémorial de la Shoah, University of Michigan, The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University, Yad Vashem, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, University College London.