GALE COLLABORATIVE

On Jewish Life in the Americas

By Dr. Naomi Lindstrom, Director

During the 2022–23 academic year, the Gale Collaborative continued to host activities at the University of Texas at Austin and to participate in an international collaboration whose other partners are the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the University of British Columbia, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Early in Fall Semester 2022, a committee was formed to plan the activities of the Gale Collaborative. It includes Naomi Lindstrom, Dr. Suzanne Seriff of Anthropology and the Schusterman Center, Dr. Samantha Pickette, the Assistant Director of the Schusterman Center, and Dr. Julia Mickenberg of American Studies. The members identify speakers for the series and brainstorm about how it can best serve UT students and faculty while also drawing community members.

We have been hosting two speakers per semester, one on a Latin American and the other on a U.S. or Canadian theme. In the fall, we enjoyed the opportunity to cosponsor an additional very special event: the visit of the Mexican Jewish writer Margo Glantz (see page 8).

Our first fall speaker was Dr. Laura Levitt of Temple University. She visited Professor Seriff’s social justice internship course and gave two talks: “Objects Brushed by Violence: What Kinds of Stories Might They Tell” and “American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust: An Object Lesson.”

Dr. Amy Kaminsky of the University of Minnesota spoke later in the fall semester on “Race, Gender, and the Myth of the Jewish Gaucho.” This event enjoyed support from several new partners. The Program in Race, Indigeneity and Migration cosponsored and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in UT’s College of Liberal Arts provided a generous grant to support Dr. Kaminsky’s visit. These collaborations are part of our efforts to create links between Jewish Studies at UT and programs and offices that promote cultural diversity.

The international group of researchers affiliated with the Gale Collaborative has remained active since publishing the 2022 multi-authored compilation Jews in the Americas: Transnational Perspectives. The group subsequently held two webinars based on this volume. Our session at the 2022 conference of the Association for Jewish Studies in December was designed to explore further research possibilities that will lead to a second compilation.

The first Latin American event of the spring was the lecture “Cain and Abel and Enforced Disappearances: Reflections from an Argentine Jewish Human Rights Lawyer” by Ariel Dulitzky, Director of the Human Rights Clinic at the UT School of Law. He discussed how, in mid-career, he had recognized the importance of Jewish thought to his human rights work.

On the North American side, Professor Henry Bial of the University of Kansas offered “Stop Calling It Jewface: When Gentile Actors Play Jewish Roles.” This discussion of casting non-Jews in Jewish roles sparked lively debate. The event was co-sponsored with the Department of Theatre and Dance and attracted audience members from performance studies as well as our regulars.

For Fall 2024, we have scheduled a talk by Professor Golan Moskowitz about the illustrator and author Maurice Sendak and another by Professor Stephanie Pridgeon on Jewish themes in Latin American cinema. In the works is a special event in collaboration with LLILAS celebrating contemporary Ladino-language literature and Sephardic culture.