During June of 2015, an anthropological and sociological study was conducted in the Dominican city of Bani. On the surface, the banilejo people appear to be devout Catholics. However, having had access to their personal lives, it was evident that their peculiar family traditions and folklore hinted at their liminal identities. This study involved interviewing 23 female subjects with questions found in the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitorial manuals. In addition, their mitochondrial DNA sequences were analyzed and demonstrated a high percentage of consanguinity and inbreeding within Bani's population. The genetic analysis of their mitochondrial DNA yielded genetic links with Jewish women from worldwide Jewish communities. Victor Turner's communitas theory and Geertz's thick description were used as the methodology. Ultimately, the sociological and anthropological analysis of their way of life evidenced how their ancestors preserved Jewish identity covertly throughout the inquisition time period (1481-1834) and how they continue to perpetuate it in contemporary times through consanguinity, and the power of superstition and taboo.

Race science is built on ideas of division and categorization. In the historian's quest to tell the story of race science, certain frameworks have been used that can greatly inhibit our understanding of this fraught topic. The impulse to study race science in the framework of the nation-state has led to certain misconceptions and lends itself to a historical narrative wherein racist concepts stop at artificially imposed borders. In addition, the national framework detracts from the individual's contributions and instead lumps these contributions together on the level of the nation-state, thus opening the door for judgments about whole nations being more or less responsible for race science. In this work, I explore contributions to race science pertaining to the "Jewish race" (which I have simplified to the phrase "Jewish race science") made by individual French writers and scholars. These contributions have been overlooked at times by historians who look to more notorious examples, such as those made by German race science theorists; in failing comprehensively to examine all significant contributions to race science, historians have often inhibited their own ability to understand Jewish race science fully. If such a historical field is to be understood, one must be aware of the full range of development of Jewish race science, both in terms of geographical scope and scholarly focus. By bringing attention to Jewish race science contributions made in nineteenth-century France, it is my intention to broaden the understanding of this field and to help bring about a new approach to the field that is less reliant on the nationalist framework in its evaluation of the nature and impact of race science.

The following thesis will examine the links between popular culture and tourism, and their impact on collective memory. The discussed material will include films produced in modern Germany and Poland, and other cultural phenomena related to the war and post-war reality. The analysis will also address the issue of Dark Tourism, strongly associated with modern tourism. Furthermore this work will explore the strategies implied by travel agencies and museums to meet the needs of modern tourists and their potential in promoting new touristic attractions.

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This thesis examines the progression from relatively peaceful relations between Alexandrians and Jews under the Ptolemies to the Diaspora Revolt under the Romans. A close analysis of the literature evidences that the transition from Ptolemaic to Roman Alexandria had critical effects on Jewish status in the Diaspora. One of the most far reaching consequences of the shift from the Ptolemies to Romans was forcing the Alexandrians to participate in the struggle for imperial patronage. Alexandrian involvement introduced a new element to the ongoing conflict among Egypt’s Jews and native Egyptians. The Alexandrian citizens consciously cut back privileges the Jews previously enjoyed under the Ptolemies and sought to block the Jews from advancing within the Roman system. Soon the Jews were confronted with rhetoric slandering their civility and culture. Faced with a choice, many Jews forsook Judaism and their traditions for more upwardly mobile life. After the outbreak of the First Jewish War Jewish life took a turn for the worse. Many Jews found themselves in a system that classified them according to their heritage and ancestry, limiting advancement even for apostates. With the resulting Jewish tax (fiscus Judaicus) Jews were becoming more economically and socially marginalized. The Alexandrian Jews were a literate society in their own right, and sought to reverse their diminishing prestige with a rhetoric of their own. This thesis analyzes Jewish writings and pagan writings about the Jews, which evidences their changing socio-political position in Greco-Roman society. Increasingly the Jews wrote with an urgent rhetoric in attempts to persuade their fellow Jews to remain loyal to Judaism and to seek their rights within the construct of the Roman system. Meanwhile, tensions between their community and the Alexandrian community grew. In less than 100 years, from 30 CE to 117 CE, the Alexandrians attacked the Jewish community on at least three occasions. Despite the advice of the most Hellenized elites, the Jews did not sit idly by, but instead sought to disrupt Alexandrian meetings, anti-Jewish theater productions, and appealed to Rome. In the year 115 CE, tensions reached a high. Facing three years of violent attacks against their community, Alexandrian Jews responded to Jewish uprisings in Cyrene and Egypt with an uprising of their own. Really a series of revolts, historians have termed these events simply “the Diaspora Revolt.”

The thesis explores the Jewish view of Jesus Christ of Geza Vermes concept and its possible influence on the Jewish-Christian dialogue. This Jewish researcher is known primarily as a popularist of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were translated by him into English for the first time. Admittedly he is significant in the field of Jesus Studies. We present the author's perception of Jesus according to his life and work with focus on selected New Testament passages. Furthermore we focus on Messianic Judaism as a potential bridge in the Jewish-Christian dialogue, and discuss the conteporary state of these relations. A research survey was also developed on the subject of the dialogue. Finally, we summarize and evaluate the contribution of Geza Vermes' work, with emphasis on its use in the Jewish-Christian dialogue, with the support of our own research based on Czech experts,that complements the acquired piece of knowledge.

This dissertation investigates how Jewish women social scientists relationally established their gendered-racialized subjectivities and theories about race-gender-sexuality-class through their portrayals of black women’s sexuality and family structures in the African Diaspora: the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, Swaziland, and the U.K. The central women in this study: Ellen Hellmann, Ruth Landes, Hilda Kuper, and Ruth Glass, were part of the same “political generation,” born in 1908-1912, coming of age when Jews of European descent experienced an ambivalent and conditional assimilation into whiteness, a form of internal colonization. I demonstrate how each woman’s familial origin point in Europe, parental class and political orientations, were important factors influencing her later personal/professional networks and social science theorizing about women of color. However, other important factors included the national racial context, the political affiliations of her partners, her marital status and her transracial fieldwork experiences. One of the main problems my work addresses is how the internal colonization process in differing nations within the Jewish diaspora differently affected and positioned Jewish social scientists from divergent class and political affiliations. Gendering Aamir Mufti’s primarily male-oriented argument, I demonstrate how Jewish internal divergences serve as an example that highlights the lack of uniformity within any “identity” group, and the ways that minority groups, like Jews, use measures of “abnormal” gender and sexuality, to create internal exiled minorities in order to try to assimilate into the majority colonizing culture. My dissertation addresses three problems within previous studies of Jewish social scientists by creating a gendered analysis of the history of Jews in social science, an analysis of Jewish subjectivity within histories of women (who were Jewish) in social science, and a critique of the either-or assumption that Jewishness necessarily equated with a “radical” anti-racist approach or a “colonizing” stance toward black communities. The data collection followed a mixed methods approach, incorporating archival research, ethnographic object analysis, site visits in Brazil and South Africa, consultations with library, archive and museum professionals, and interviews with scholars connected to the core women in the study.

Alors que le silence s’était fait grand au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le judéocide a été depuis trois décennies investi par la recherche historique. Le constat est toutefois bien différent pour la période de la reconstruction des collectivités juives après 1945 qui demeure en grande partie absente de l’historiographie contemporaine. Or, le séisme que constitue le judéocide incite à analyser les divers processus qui se mettent en place et qui visent à terme à la reconstruction de la collectivité juive de Belgique. Cette thèse doctorale cherche donc à éclairer ce processus de retour à la normale. L’objectif est plus spécifiquement d’interroger la période de la reconstruction sous l'angle de l'engagement politique. C’est une histoire socio-politique et une histoire culturelle du politique de la reconstruction de la collectivité juive à Bruxelles que cette analyse propose. L'approche ainsi adoptée identifie tant les enjeux majeurs auxquels la collectivité juive fait face après la Libération que les réponses spécifiques qu'apporte l'activisme politique durant une décennie-charnière dans l'histoire des Juifs de Belgique. Dans cette réflexion sur l'investissement politique comme moteur de reconstruction, l’analyse se porte plus spécifiquement sur la participation à ce processus du milieu juif progressiste et communiste bruxellois. En appréhendant la présence et l’action spécifique des Juifs communiste dans la reconstruction à Bruxelles, cette recherche met en lumière la manière dont l'engagement politique dans ses applications concrètes peut être un facteur de revalorisation et de reconstruction de soi et de sa collectivité. A cette fin, cette étude s’articule principalement autour des archives du mouvement des Juifs communistes bruxellois, Solidarité Juive (documents administratifs et presse yiddish), de celles ses animateurs ainsi que des archives d'un certains nombres d'instances du PCB. Ces sources ainsi revisitées situent cette recherche au confluent de quatre pôles historiographiques que cette étude aliment :l’histoire des Juifs en Belgique et le judéocide, le parcours des militants juifs communistes en Belgique, l’histoire du communisme en Belgique et enfin celui des processus mémoriels.<p><p>Après une introduction et un aperçu chronologique, cette thèse s’articule autour de six chapitres. Le premier, intitulé "Une collectivité en reconstruction", esquisse une typologie socio-politique qui cerne les débats qui animent la "rue juive" au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre. Ce chapitre offre donc un tableau circonstancié des lignes de force du processus de réinsertion qui constituent le fil rouge de notre propos. Les chapitres suivants étudient plus en détail l'engagement social, mémoriel, culturel et politique des Juifs communistes à Bruxelles et leur impact effectif sur le processus de reconstruction. Le deuxième chapitre, "L'ancrage social de la mouvance judéo-communiste", illustre et analyse l'action sociale et l’implication des militants juifs communistes au sein du maillage institutionnel juif bruxellois. L'intérêt pour le devenir de la jeunesse juive est central dans ce processus. "Entre nécessité et enjeu politique :l’avenir de l’enfance juive", le chapitre 3 s'intéresse autant à la politique menée et ses applications concrètes qu'à la pédagogie qui sous-tend de manière éclairante cette démarche. L’'inscription de ces militants dans la reconstruction à travers son implication dans la promotion d'une culture yiddish populaire et sécularisée d'une part et la valorisation de la mémoire de la Résistance juive et du combat antifasciste d'autre part, deux objets (et agents) implicites mais fondamentaux de la reconstruction constituent les chapitres 4 et 5. A travers ces deux volets, cette recherche met également en lumière le processus de constitution d'une image de soi à revaloriser après les années de persécution. Le chapitre 6, "L'idéologie à l'épreuve de la reconstruction", analyse l'évolution des rapports et des tensions entre les militants juifs et le PCB. Ce portrait collectif du militantisme juif communiste à Bruxelles après 1945 met en évidence la nature même de cet engagement. Ce chapitre s'attache à décrire l'impact de cette relation et de sa détérioration sur le processus de reconstruction. Le propos illustre la tentative des militants juifs de réaliser la synthèse entre une allégeance indéfectible à une utopie politique et aux structures qui l’incarnent, et un attachement revendiqué à une identité spécifique.<p>Enfin, avant de conclure, cette recherche s’intéresse à l'investissement de ce militantisme juif et communiste dans une phase avancée du processus de reconstruction et de redéploiement de la collectivité juive bruxelloise autour des centres communautaires. A travers la redéfinition du paysage juif à la fin des années 1950, l'épilogue propose une réflexion sur la nature de l'identité juive et communiste d'après-guerre. Ce groupe élabore une réponse évolutive qui tente la conciliation entre des aspirations diverses. Cette dynamique centrale de la réintégration sociétale met en exergue l’impact d’un engagement politique radical, égalitaire, universaliste. Agissant comme un révélateur des tensions socio-politiques de la Belgique d'après-guerre, cet engagement politique – ce qui est propre à tout groupe minoritaire – s'avère un vecteur de reconstruction mais également d'émancipation. Il crée les conditions d'une certaine audace et offre un marchepied idéal au processus d'intégration. Créant les conditions de l'émancipation, il engendre l'explosion des possibles. Le paradoxe est néanmoins que, ce faisant, le PCB favorise la dissonance entre un cadre politique rigidement inadapté aux utopies et aux rêves qu'il avait pu susciter, et le processus d'émancipation qu’il alimente et qui libère, enfin, les "enfants du ghetto".<p> / Doctorat en Histoire, art et archéologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

My thesis is an analysis of my own translation of a chapter from Dominik Nagl's legal history 'Grenzfälle,' which addresses questions of citizenship and nationality in the context of the German colonies in Africa and the South Pacific. My analysis focuses primarily on strategies that I used in an effort to preserve the strangeness of a linguistic context that is, in many ways, "foreign" to twenty first-century North Americans while also striving to avoid reproducing the violence embedded in language that is historically laden with extreme power disparities.