Long-Term Research Fellowships at the American Academy in Rome

FAIN: RA-269814-20

American Academy in Rome (New York, NY 10021-4905)
Mark Robbins (Project Director: August 2019 to present)

16 months of stipend support (1.5 fellowships) per year for three years and a contribution to defray costs associated with the selection of fellows.

The American Academy in Rome requests a grant from the NEH for partial support of six 11-month post-doctoral fellowships in the humanities over three academic years (2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24) and partial support for the costs of the juries convened to evaluate and select winners. The NEH has supported fellowships at the Academy since 1976. These fellowships continue to stand at the heart of the Academy's mission to support innovative scholars, writers, and artists living and working together in a dynamic international community. The Academy fosters cross-disciplinary exchange and enriches American scholarship and culture by attracting scholars of exceptional caliber and giving them the resources to advance their work and create new insights in the humanities. [edited by staff]

Associated Products

Jews, Rights, and Belonging in Tunisia: Léon Elmilik, 1861-1881 (Article)
Title: Jews, Rights, and Belonging in Tunisia: Léon Elmilik, 1861-1881
Author: Jessica Marglin
Abstract: Through a case study of Léon Elmilik, an Algerian Jew who made his career in Tunisia, this article contributes to the history of citizenship in the Maghrib beyond the formal, state-centered status accorded to legal citizens. Elmilik aligned himself with Jews and Christians who believed in the need to modernize and Europeanize Tunisia. He pursued this goal through his involvement in the local branch of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (an international Jewish organization based in Paris), his publications in a French Jewish newspaper, and his membership in a local masonic lodge. In all these arenas, he joined a chorus of European voices decrying the abuses of Jews at the hands of Tunisian government officials. But after he accepted a job working for a Tunisian government official in 1873, Elmilik began regularly defending the Tunisian state’s treatment of its Jews. Rather than presume that Elmilik was a janus-faced opportunist, I argue that his different, at times opposed engagements were representative of the multiple repositories in which Jews located their rights. Rights were central to the construction of belonging; by examining the various guarantors of rights to which Jews appealed, we can glimpse the multiple levels of belonging that Jews – and to some extent Muslims – cultivated in the pre-colonial Maghrib.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://journals.openedition.org/anneemaghreb/6652
Primary URL Description: Link to journal contents
Access Model: Subscription Only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: L'Annee du Maghreb
Publisher: CNRS Editions

David Castelli on Nationalism and Universalism (Article)
Title: David Castelli on Nationalism and Universalism
Author: Jessica Marglin
Abstract: AT THE AGE OF twenty-seven, David Castelli had a crisis of faith. Born in the Tuscan port city of Livorno in 1836, Castelli was a promising student on the path to rabbinic ordination. He studied with some of Italy's most influential teachers—including Benedetto (Abraham Barukh) Piperno, who also taught Sabato Morais, founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary. But his doubts made Castelli abandon the path to the rabbinate; he moved to Pisa, home of the Scuole Normale Superiore, one of Italy's most venerable seats of Orientalist scholarship. In Tuscany's most famous university town, he devoted himself to the study of Arabic and Syriac.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/777318
Primary URL Description: Link to citation in Project Muse
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jewish Quarterly Review
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Introduction: Jewish History in the Mediterranean, the Mediterranean in Jewish History (Book Section)
Title: Introduction: Jewish History in the Mediterranean, the Mediterranean in Jewish History
Author: Matthias B. Lehmann
Author: Jessica Marglin
Editor: Matthias B. Lehmann
Editor: Jessica M. Marglin
Abstract: What does an understanding of Jewish history contribute to the study of the Mediterranean, and what can Mediterranean studies contribute to our knowledge of Jewish history? Jews and the Mediterranean considers the historical potency and uniqueness of what happens when Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ashkenazi Jews meet in the Mediterranean region. By focusing on the specificity of the Jewish experience, the essays gathered in this volume emphasize human agency and culture over the length of Mediterranean history. This collection draws attention to what made Jewish people distinctive and warns against facile notions of Mediterranean connectivity, diversity, fluidity, and hybridity, presenting a new assessment of the Jewish experience in the Mediterranean.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://iupress.org/9780253047984/jews-and-the-mediterranean/
Primary URL Description: Link to book on publisher website
Access Model: Purchase
Publisher: University of Indiana Press
Book Title: Jews and the Mediterranean
ISBN: 9780253047939

Automated Slaves, Ambivalent Images, and Noneffective Machines in al-Jazari’s Compendium of the Mechanical Arts, 1206 (Article)
Title: Automated Slaves, Ambivalent Images, and Noneffective Machines in al-Jazari’s Compendium of the Mechanical Arts, 1206
Author: Lamia Balafrej
Abstract: N/A
Year: 2023
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual., no. 21

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