BAJS Conference 2019

The annual British Association for Jewish Studies Conference will take place at the University of Oxford from 21-24 July 2019.

The conference will focus on the question, “What is commentary”? This question is central to philology, literature, cultural studies and history, among other disciplines, and is intended to be multidisciplinary in its scope and presentation. The conference theme for BAJS 2019 focuses on ‘commentary’ from a variety of perspectives: the form and purpose of scholarly commentary; the definition, critique and generation of commentary;commentary and literary criticism;  ancient and medieval scholastic traditions and modern productions of film, art and literature;  feminist/gender driven commentary – such as the projects seeking to produce a feminist midrash and current feminist commentaries on the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud;  history and politics; commentary and commentators in the academy (the place of philology); commentary and translation; reception of commentary; history; materiality (textual and visual); the relationship between commentary and metacommentary; and whether the concept of commentary is helpful or disruptive with respect to Jewish Antiquity. This topic is intended to reinforce the plurilingual and multidisciplinary nature of Jewish Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Download the programme here