Columbia University

Join us for the 2023 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture with award-winning author and historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein. This event will take place in person at the IIJS, 617 Kent Hall.

The picnic blanket is lumpy, the ants bite, the food is sandy: but you see so much more when you’re eating on the ground.  The picnic and the portable camera came of age together in late and post Ottoman society, and “vernacular” picnic photographs are a ubiquitous feature of the Sephardic photo album.  This essay converses with the children, women, men, and objects that appear in these images, considering how Sephardic Jews relaxed and ate in nature at a time when so much was shifting around them.  It also asks whether the scattered, globally diasporic, family-owned archive of the Sephardic photo album can be united to restore a lived, dusty, lusty image of late and post-Ottoman Jewish life.

Sarah Abrevaya Stein is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, and the Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA. The recipient of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two National Jewish Book Awards, Stein is the author and editor of ten books, many of them award-winning. Her most recent books include Wartime North Africa: a Documentary History, 1934-1950 (Stanford University Press, with the cooperation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2022) and Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (FSG/Macmillan, 2019), which was named a Best Book of 2019 by The Economist and an Editor’s Choice Book by the New York Times Book Review.

Please register for this event at 2023 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture with Sarah Abrevaya Stein Tickets, Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 4:00 PM | Eventbrite.

Supported by the generosity of the Knapp and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

with President Lee C. Bollinger
Columbia University

Tuesday, January 31
11am (New York) 1pm (Santiago)

601 W. 125th Street, NY, NY 2nd Floor

In person registration here

Webinar registrtion here
Co-organized by Columbia Global Centers and the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), “Columbia University and Chile: A Century of Innovation and Collaboration” is an event  to honor Karen Poniachik, pioneer and advocate for women’s rights in Chile, and founding director of Columbia Global Centers | Santiago who passed away in October 2022.

WELCOME 

Wafaa El-Sadr, Executive Vice President for Columbia Global
OPENING REMARKS

Lee C. Bollinger, President, Columbia University

PRESENTERS

Vicky Murillo, Director, Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS)

Carla Magri, Columbia Global Centers | Santiago

PANEL

Nara Milanich, Professor of History, Barnard College

Walter Baethgen, Senior Research Scientist, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia Climate School

Regina Cortina, Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

Astrid Liden, Columbia College Student

MODERATOR
Tom Trebat, Director Columbia Global Centers | Rio de Janeiro
*Lunch will be served after the event.

RSVP HERE

This event will feature a screening of the short film Anges, followed by a Q&A session with Professor Roxanne Varzi and director Jasmine Bissete, along with an accompanying talk by Professor Varzi on French-Iranian cultural relations.

Anges (English title Angels) is set in Tehran, Iran and 1968. When French-Iranian student Niloufar, 10, learns that President Georges Pompidou will visit her school, she devises her own way to make an impression. Anges is a short (6 minute) French-language U.S.-France co-production released in 2021. It has been featured in international film festivals including the New York Shorts International Film Festival, Catalina Film Festival, Pittsburgh Shorts, Cyprus International Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Detmold in Germany, and the Rabat International Children and Family Film Festival. The film was awarded the Best Director Prize at the Children’s International Film Festival of Wales.

Director Jasmine Bissete graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from Columbia University, Columbia College. She is a filmmaker and the co-founder and Creative Director of Kinglet Films, a production company operating in New York and Paris with a focus on fostering cross-cultural connections through cinema.

Professor Roxanne Varzi, an Iranian-born American cultural anthropologist, filmmaker, sound artist, writer, playwright, and educator. Roxanne Varzi is Professor of Anthropology and Film and Media Studies at University of California, Irvine.