In conjunction with a symposium sponsored by the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies and the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies on the idea of the Arab Jew, we invite interested graduate students from a broad range of fields including history, literature, sociology, anthropology, and political science to submit paper proposals reflecting and contributing to an evolving scholarly conversation about the historical place, the literary representation, and the social reality of Arab Jews.

Mizrahim, Sephardim, Arab Jews, and Jewish Arabs have slowly moved from the historical margins to the center of scholarly inquiry and political activism and scholars have paid increasing attention to this historically marginalized population. As a hybrid identity that is at once paradigmatic and paradoxical, the Arab Jew can represent the transcendence of boundaries, the struggle against hegemony, and the range of internal tensions that have pervaded the political and cultural landscapes of Israel, the Middle East, and the larger Jewish world.

We invite proposals considering the social, political, cultural, and economic situation of Arab Jews in Israel and pre-state Palestine; the history, literature and culture of Jews in the Arab world, European Jewish interest in Arabs and Arab Jews, including self-representation as Arabs; the integration of Arab/Mizrahi culture in contemporary Israel, and the representation of Arab Jews in media and culture.

Through this conference, we aim to share and develop our own research in conversation with one another and with faculty. Thus, we hope to contribute to critical discourse about the current state of scholarship on the question of the Arab Jew as we consider methods and avenues for ongoing work.

Proposals should be 250 words and are due by Friday, October 26, 2007.

Please submit proposals to the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies at cjs@humnet.ucla.edu.