Theories and Contexts of Jewish-Muslim Relations
Bryan Cheyette, Yulia Egorova, and Jonathan Glasser
In conversation with Adi Saleem Bharat
November 5, 2020
In this webinar, Bryan Cheyette, Yulia Egorova, and Jonathan Glasser reflect on the analytical utility and validity of the category of Jewish-Muslim relations in their own research. In particular, Bryan Cheyette will reflect on how Jews and Muslims are bifurcated into “good” and “bad” versions which play off each other in the form of racialized tolerance in British culture. Yulia Egorova will examine the concept of Jewish-Muslim relations in relation to her fieldwork with Jewish-Muslim interfaith dialogue initiatives in the UK. Finally, Jonathan Glasser will make a tentative case for retaining the category of Jewish-Muslim relations, despite its potential pitfalls.
Bryan Cheyette is Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Reading. He has teaching and research interests in late-nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century literature, modernism and politics, fiction and ethnicity, postcolonial literature and theory, British-Jewish literature, theories of “race” and modernity, and Holocaust testimony. He is the editor or author of ten books most recently The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Diasporas of the Mind: Jewish/Postcolonial Writing and the Nightmare of History (Yale University Press, 2013).
Yulia Egorova is Professor of Anthropology at Durham University, where she is also the director of the Centre for the Study of Jewish Culture, Society and Politics. Her research interests include anthropology of Jewish communities, and constructions of minority identities. She is currently working on a project exploring debates about antisemitism and Islamophobia in the UK. She is the author of several books, including most recently Jews and Muslims in South Asia: Reflections on Difference, Religion and Race (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Jonathan Glasser is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the College of William & Mary. His work focuses on modern North Africa, with particular attention to Algeria and Morocco. He is the author of The Lost Paradise: Andalusi Music in Urban North Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2016). His current project looks at Muslim-Jewish interactions around music and poetry in Algeria and its diaspora in the early modern and modern periods.
Adi Saleem Bharat is an LSA Collegiate Fellow in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He is also a co-founder and coordinator of the Jewish-Muslim Research Network. His research broadly focuses on the intersection of race and religion, particularly in relation to Jews and Muslims, in contemporary France.
