Dr. Irven M. Resnick has been awarded $199,756 in renewed funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This funding will support a third summer institute entitled “Representations of the ‘Other’: Jews in Medieval Christendom” for university and college faculty and full-time graduate students. The five-week institute was also conducted in 2003 and 2006.
Resnick, who holds the Chair of Excellence in Judaic Studies at UTC and is a Senior Associate at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, notes that after an examination of the unique legal status of Jews as a tolerated and theologically necessary minority culture in early medieval Europe, the program will focus upon the increasingly frequent demonization of Jews in twelfth and thirteenth-century literary polemics and public disputations. Participants will better understand a gradual deterioration in Jewish-Christian relations leading to the eventual expulsion from most lands in medieval Christendom of all those Jews (and Muslims) who refused baptism.
Eleven participants from the 2006 summer institute presented their research product at the 14th International Medieval Congress in Leeds, England. They are preparing their essays for publication in a companion volume.
“The program’s success has depended upon an excellent group of scholarly experts drawn from the US, the United Kingdom, and Israel, upon the superb research facilities at Oxford University and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and upon the dedication of the participants themselves, who must give themselves over to months of intensive reading in order to spend five very challenging weeks in the study of medieval Jewish-Christian relations,” said Resnick.
The summer institute will be held July 6- August 11, 2010, at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, a recognized independent centre of the University of Oxford (England). Twenty-five participants will study depictions of Jews from the standpoint of medieval Christian theology, canon law, and literature. They will receive a stipend of $3900 to help cover their expenses.
Applications to participate will be accepted until March 2, 2010. For additional information and application instructions, prospective participants should consult the program web site at www.utc.edu/neh.
