Coordination Funds

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sarah M. Ross
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; History of Science
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 496781192

The aim of the priority program is to conduct interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, seeking to contextualize developments in the societal and cultural-political significance of, and engagement with, Jewish cultural heritage in Europe. The program will critically examine what it is that is categorized as Jewish cultural heritage; by whom; and the processes of negotiation in relation the preceding points among stakeholders and other actors with vested interests. The mechanisms that structure historical and contemporary relationships between society, Jewish cultural heritage, and the relevant political, economic, religious, and sociocultural spheres will be identified and analyzed accordingly. Drawing from current insights and discourses in the field of Critical Heritage Studies, the overall objective of the project is to develop an understanding of the discursivization of the cultural heritage of Jews in Europe. This involves a reconsideration of the German concept of „Jüdisches Kulturerbe“, understood as a cultural-political and economic resource, specifically the cultural heritage of a civilization that vanished; and "Jewish heritage", understood as the totality of all forms of expression of Jewish life. An interdisciplinary team of scholars will critically examine tangible, intangible, and intellectual objects, contexts of creation, and the processes of transmission and innovation of Jewish cultural heritage. Other questions to be considered include the development and deployment of strategies for involving Jewish communities and institutions in the heritagization processes of their own heritage. In the first funding period, the participating scholars will devote themselves primarily, and from a comparative vantage point, to "theoretical reflection" on the diverse understandings and the changing uses of Jewish cultural heritage in identified European societies. Retrospective analyses, together with comparative classifications of historical and contemporary developments in Germany and Europe will feature prominently at this stage. In this manner, the SPP "Jewish Cultural Heritage" aspires to turn interdisciplinary examinations of, and reflections on Jewish heritage into a transdisciplinary consideration of the latter; and to join and merge previous academic, monument preservation, museological and cultural-political work in this field in a critical, and thus forward-looking, way.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2357: Jewish Cultural Heritage