Abstract
The general theme of the 2023 seminar series will be the relation between our narratives about the past and the future we aspire to. The approach we create to the stories, events, characters, and historical processes of the Sephardi/Levantine past through our research is inevitably guided by values, by our moral and political commitments and beliefs. Which elements of the past do we strive to preserve, reclaim and give continuity to? What are we trying to say about a potential future with our research? Which stories can become part of canonized history and which always seem to be deemed as anecdotes? Which theoretical, social, political, and cultural frameworks are we wrestling with and which ones are we trying to put forward?
Throughout this third year of our seminar series, we aim to discuss the future involved in each way of looking at the past, the political agendas of historical research, the unavoidable collection of values that guide our inquiry into the past. Some of the topics we will explore include transmission of narratives among collectives and among researchers, ownership of archives, reencounters with the past, academic legitimacy of certain topics and collectives, vehicles of memory (music, oral history, proverbs, etc.) and construction of historical narratives.