Project acronym BeyondtheElite
Project Beyond the Elite: Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe
Researcher (PI) Elisheva Baumgarten
Host Institution (HI) THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary The two fundamental challenges of this project are the integration of medieval Jewries and their histories within the framework of European history without undermining their distinct communal status and the creation of a history of everyday medieval Jewish life that includes those who were not part of the learned elite. The study will focus on the Jewish communities of northern Europe (roughly modern Germany, northern France and England) from 1100-1350. From the mid-thirteenth century these medieval Jewish communities were subject to growing persecution. The approaches proposed to access daily praxis seek to highlight tangible dimensions of religious life rather than the more common study of ideologies to date. This task is complex because the extant sources in Hebrew as well as those in Latin and vernacular were written by the learned elite and will require a broad survey of multiple textual and material sources.
Four main strands will be examined and combined:
1. An outline of the strata of Jewish society, better defining the elites and other groups.
2. A study of select communal and familial spaces such as the house, the synagogue, the market place have yet to be examined as social spaces.
3. Ritual and urban rhythms especially the annual cycle, connecting between Jewish and Christian environments.
4. Material culture, as objects were used by Jews and Christians alike.
Aspects of material culture, the physical environment and urban rhythms are often described as “neutral” yet will be mined to demonstrate how they exemplified difference while being simultaneously ubiquitous in local cultures. The deterioration of relations between Jews and Christians will provide a gauge for examining change during this period. The final stage of the project will include comparative case studies of other Jewish communities. I expect my findings will inform scholars of medieval culture at large and promote comparative methodologies for studying other minority ethnic groups
Summary
The two fundamental challenges of this project are the integration of medieval Jewries and their histories within the framework of European history without undermining their distinct communal status and the creation of a history of everyday medieval Jewish life that includes those who were not part of the learned elite. The study will focus on the Jewish communities of northern Europe (roughly modern Germany, northern France and England) from 1100-1350. From the mid-thirteenth century these medieval Jewish communities were subject to growing persecution. The approaches proposed to access daily praxis seek to highlight tangible dimensions of religious life rather than the more common study of ideologies to date. This task is complex because the extant sources in Hebrew as well as those in Latin and vernacular were written by the learned elite and will require a broad survey of multiple textual and material sources.
Four main strands will be examined and combined:
1. An outline of the strata of Jewish society, better defining the elites and other groups.
2. A study of select communal and familial spaces such as the house, the synagogue, the market place have yet to be examined as social spaces.
3. Ritual and urban rhythms especially the annual cycle, connecting between Jewish and Christian environments.
4. Material culture, as objects were used by Jews and Christians alike.
Aspects of material culture, the physical environment and urban rhythms are often described as “neutral” yet will be mined to demonstrate how they exemplified difference while being simultaneously ubiquitous in local cultures. The deterioration of relations between Jews and Christians will provide a gauge for examining change during this period. The final stage of the project will include comparative case studies of other Jewish communities. I expect my findings will inform scholars of medieval culture at large and promote comparative methodologies for studying other minority ethnic groups
Max ERC Funding
1 941 688 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-11-01, End date: 2021-10-31
Project acronym COLOUR
Project THE COLOUR OF LABOUR: THE RACIALIZED LIVES OF MIGRANTS
Researcher (PI) Cristiana BASTOS
Host Institution (HI) INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS SOCIAIS
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary This project is about the racialization of migrant labourers across political boundaries, with a main focus on impoverished Europeans who served in huge numbers as indentured labourers in nineteenth-century Guianese, Caribbean and Hawaiian sugar plantations and in the workforce of late nineteenth and early twentieth century New England cotton mills.
With this project I aim to provide major, innovative contributions on three fronts:
(i) theory-making, by working the concepts of race, racism, racialization, embodiment and memory in association with migrant work across political boundaries and imperial classifications;
(ii) social relevance of basic research, by linking an issue of pressing urgency in contemporary Europe to substantive, broad-scope, and multi-sited anthropological/historical research on the wider structures of domination, rather than to targeted problem-solving research of immediate applicability;
(iii) disciplinary scope, by proposing to unsettle historical anthropology and ethnographic history from within the boundaries of a single empire, and to overcome the limitations of existing comparative studies, by inquiring into the flows and interactions between competing empires.
I will also:
(iv) strengthen the methodology for multi-sited, multi-period research in anthropology;
(v) contribute to an anthropology of global connections and trans-local approaches;
(vi) promote the multidisciplinary and combined-methods approach to complex subjects;
(vii) narrate a poorly known set of historical situations of labour racializations involving Europeans and document the ways they reverberate through generations; and
(viii) make the analysis available to both academic audiences and the different communities involved in the research.
Summary
This project is about the racialization of migrant labourers across political boundaries, with a main focus on impoverished Europeans who served in huge numbers as indentured labourers in nineteenth-century Guianese, Caribbean and Hawaiian sugar plantations and in the workforce of late nineteenth and early twentieth century New England cotton mills.
With this project I aim to provide major, innovative contributions on three fronts:
(i) theory-making, by working the concepts of race, racism, racialization, embodiment and memory in association with migrant work across political boundaries and imperial classifications;
(ii) social relevance of basic research, by linking an issue of pressing urgency in contemporary Europe to substantive, broad-scope, and multi-sited anthropological/historical research on the wider structures of domination, rather than to targeted problem-solving research of immediate applicability;
(iii) disciplinary scope, by proposing to unsettle historical anthropology and ethnographic history from within the boundaries of a single empire, and to overcome the limitations of existing comparative studies, by inquiring into the flows and interactions between competing empires.
I will also:
(iv) strengthen the methodology for multi-sited, multi-period research in anthropology;
(v) contribute to an anthropology of global connections and trans-local approaches;
(vi) promote the multidisciplinary and combined-methods approach to complex subjects;
(vii) narrate a poorly known set of historical situations of labour racializations involving Europeans and document the ways they reverberate through generations; and
(viii) make the analysis available to both academic audiences and the different communities involved in the research.
Max ERC Funding
2 161 397 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym TReX
Project Transient Relativistic eXplosions
Researcher (PI) Tsvi PIRAN
Host Institution (HI) THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE9, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary The recent and upcoming deep and large field of view surveys has ascribed transient sources an ever-increasing role in 21st century astronomy. We propose to explore three relativistic transients: Compact binary mergers; Stellar disruption by massive black holes (TDEs) and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). Mergers are the prime targets of advanced Gravitational Waves (GW) detectors. Their detection will open a new window on the Universe. However localization, based on electromagnetic (EM) counterparts, that we propose to study here, is essential for GW Astronomy. TDEs provide a novel view on galactic centers’ massive black holes. However, TDE observations pose some puzzles, suggesting that a revision of the current tidal disruption theory is needed. New observations provide a wealth of data on GRBs and this is the time to determine their inner workings and to obtain a clear model for the prompt emission mechanism – a long standing puzzle. This project includes theoretical modeling of these events as well as phenomenology of the observations and even some data analysis and observations. Mergers, TDEs and GRBs, are tightly interconnected and share similar physical mechanisms. The theory of merger radio flares and of TDE’s radio emission draws, for example, on GRBs’ afterglow theory and the interpretation of TDE high-energy emission is based on concepts borrowed from the prompt emission of GRBs. A coordinated theoretical study will reveal and utilize the commonalities of these phenomena and has a strong potential to obtain far reaching results beyond the current state of the art with possible implications to other high energy astrophysical phenomena. While this is a theoretical proposal we address at all stages directly observational issues. Hence the proposal is closely related to observations - interpreting existing puzzling observations, predicting new ones or suggesting strategies how to obtain them.
Summary
The recent and upcoming deep and large field of view surveys has ascribed transient sources an ever-increasing role in 21st century astronomy. We propose to explore three relativistic transients: Compact binary mergers; Stellar disruption by massive black holes (TDEs) and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). Mergers are the prime targets of advanced Gravitational Waves (GW) detectors. Their detection will open a new window on the Universe. However localization, based on electromagnetic (EM) counterparts, that we propose to study here, is essential for GW Astronomy. TDEs provide a novel view on galactic centers’ massive black holes. However, TDE observations pose some puzzles, suggesting that a revision of the current tidal disruption theory is needed. New observations provide a wealth of data on GRBs and this is the time to determine their inner workings and to obtain a clear model for the prompt emission mechanism – a long standing puzzle. This project includes theoretical modeling of these events as well as phenomenology of the observations and even some data analysis and observations. Mergers, TDEs and GRBs, are tightly interconnected and share similar physical mechanisms. The theory of merger radio flares and of TDE’s radio emission draws, for example, on GRBs’ afterglow theory and the interpretation of TDE high-energy emission is based on concepts borrowed from the prompt emission of GRBs. A coordinated theoretical study will reveal and utilize the commonalities of these phenomena and has a strong potential to obtain far reaching results beyond the current state of the art with possible implications to other high energy astrophysical phenomena. While this is a theoretical proposal we address at all stages directly observational issues. Hence the proposal is closely related to observations - interpreting existing puzzling observations, predicting new ones or suggesting strategies how to obtain them.
Max ERC Funding
1 449 375 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-10-01, End date: 2021-09-30