Research Conversations Michaelmas Term 2020

Tuesday 24 November 2020 at 1pm
Microsoft Teams

The first Research Conversations of this academic year will be taking place at 1pm on Tuesday 24 November 2020, by Teams. To register your attendance, please email emily.bush@orinst.ox.ac.uk by 5pm on Monday 23 November 2020.

1862 Damascus’s Christian Quarter

Professor Eugene Rogan will be in conversation with Professor Christian Sahner about his new book project. In the summer of 1860, Damascus experienced unprecedented communal violence when a Muslim mob attacked the Christian quarters of the city, killing thousands and destroying their homes and workplaces.  Professor Rogan’s research takes the Christian massacres as a point of departure to examine Ottoman measures to rebuild the city and re-integrate the Christian community after a deeply traumatic event.

1867 Edward Poynter Israel in Egypt

Professor Alison Salvesen will be in conversation with Dr Robert Simpson about the newly published volume of essays Israel in Egypt, of which she is a co-editor. In his Jews of Egypt, Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski famously stated that ‘From time immemorial, Egypt has exercised a singular power of attraction over the Jews’. Israel’s larger and more powerful neighbour represented both religious danger and a place of safety and prosperity. Through essays from scholars in fields ranging from biblical studies and classics to papyrology and archaeology, the volume Israel in Egypt explores what can be known of the attitudes and lived experiences of Jewish communities in Egypt, using both documentary and literary evidence, from biblical times to the medieval period.