New Directions in Salvage Poetics
“Salvage poetics” is a term that describes the ways in which artistic and anthropological discourses intersect to capture and describe disappearing cultures.
During this two-day seminar, 15 scholars from universities including the University of Chicago, Brown, Cornell, Yale, and Princeton will focus on new methodologies for scholarly engagement with artifacts as a means of “salvaging” dead or dying cultures.
Conference Schedule
The New Directions in Salvage Poetics Seminar will convene in the Swift Hall, Third Floor Lecture Hall. Swift Hall is located on the University of Chicago's Hyde Park Campus on the historic main quad.
Lecture Hall- Third Floor, Swift Hall
1025 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
November 3, 2025
Join for coffee and mingling before the program gets underway.
Third Floor Lecture Hall Lobby
Chair: Na’ama Rokem (University of Chicago, Comparative Literature)
Carolina López Ruiz, Professor at the Divinity School, the Classics Department, and ISAC at the University of Chicago, Fanni Faegersten, Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology, Lund University, Sweden, “Images of Nature and the Divine: Recovering Phoenician Poetics”
Jaimie Luria, Navon Postdoctoral Fellow in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies / Program Manager at the Jewish Museum of Florida - Florida International University, “Inundated Obsolescence: Uncovering and Un-Salvaging Historic Jewish Pools in Iberia”
Jesse Noily, PhD Student in the Department of History at Princeton University, “Material Culture and the Construction of the Jewish Maghreb”
Chair: Kenneth Moss (University of Chicago, History)
Seth Joachim, PhD Student in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, “Jewishness as Existential Posture: On Samuel Hugo Bergman’s Faith And Reason"
Emily King, PhD Student in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University, “Reading Abandoned Objects: The Notebooks of Simone Weil”
Sheila E. Jelen, Professor in the Divinity School, University of Chicago, “Anna Lerman Leaves for Israel: Salvage Poetics in a Polish Jewish Family Album”
Swift Hall- Common Room (First Floor)
Barbara Kirshenblatt Gimblett, Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the museum’s Core Exhibition and Professor Emerita at NYU
Title: "Post-Jewish: Salvage Poetics Made Tangible"
Bond Chapel
Join for a Dinner Reception in the Swift Hall Common Room
Conference Schedule
November 4, 2025
Join us for coffee and pastries before the program begins.
Third Floor Lecture Hall Lobby
Chair: Leora Auslander (University of Chicago, History)
Jeffrey Abt, Professor Emeritus at Wayne State University, “Recovering the Meaning of Emigrants’ Possessions”
Rachel Leah Jablon, Independent Scholar, “Remembrance, Community, and Liturgy: Yizkor Books as Paths to Religious Salvation”
Eliyana Adler, Professor of Judaic Studies at Binghamton University, “Recycling Salvaged Poetics: Jewish Memorial Books in Contemporary Poland”
Judith Lin, Fortunoff Archive Fellow at Yale University, "Property Confiscation and Primal Loss in Testimonies of Child Survivors from Thessaloniki, Greece"
Chair: Anne Moss (University of Chicago, Slavic)
Jessica Kirzane, Associate Instructional Professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago, “Recovering the Recovery of Women Who Wrote in Yiddish"
Samuel Page, PhD Student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University, “Peretz in the Field, Peretz in the Salon: Salvage Literature and Early Jewish Ethnography”
Na’amit Sturm Nagel, PhD Student in the Department of English at the University of California-Irvine, “Self-Salvage: Lore Segal's Iterative Recovery of Traumatic Memory”
Swift Hall Common Room (First Floor)
Chair: Alireza Doostdar (University of Chicago Divinity School)
Sarah Fredericks, Associate Professor in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, “Salvage Poetics During Climate Change?”
Nathan Friedman, PhD Student in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, “Towards a Musical Salvage Poetics: Artifacts in the Music of Alfred Schnittke”
Abby Gondek, Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Florida International University, “Daughter of the Archive: Salvaging Jewish Women’s Anthropologies of Race”
Samuel Rose, MDiv Student at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, “Embodiment, Loss, and Memory Keeping in Pornography”
Jennifer Scappettone, Associate Professor of English, University of Chicago
"The Republic of Exit 43: Outtakes & Scores from an Archaeology and Pop-Up Opera of the Corporate Dump”
Speakers and Panelists
Sheila E. Jelen, Professor of Literature and Visual Culture and History of Judaism
Conference ChairNov.3: Roundtable II (10:45 am -12:15 pm)…
Na'ama Rokem, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature & NELC; Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Chicago
Nov.3: Roundtable I (9:00-10:30) Urban Antiquities and their…
Carolina López-Ruiz, Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions and Mythologies in the Divinity School, the Department of Classics, and the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures
Nov.3: Roundtable I (9:00-10:30) Urban Antiquities and their…
Fanni Faegersten, Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology, Lund University, Sweden
Nov. 3: Roundtable I (9:00-10:30) Urban Antiquities and Their…
Jaimie Luria, Navon Postdoctoral Fellow in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies / Program Manager at the Jewish Museum of Florida - Florida International University
Nov. 3: Roundtable I (9:00-10:30) Urban Antiquities and their…
Jesse Noily, PhD Student in the Department of History at Princeton University
Nov. 3: Roundtable I (9:00-10:30) Urban Antiquities and Their…
Kenneth Moss, Harriet and Ulrich E. Meyer Professor of Jewish History, University of Chicago
Nov 3: Roundtable II (10:45 am -12:15 am) Philosophies of Salvage
Seth Joachim, PhD Student in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago
Nov 3: Roundtable II (10:45 am -12:15 am) Philosophies of Salvage
Emily King, PhD Student in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University
Nov 3: Roundtable II (10:45 am -12:15 am) Philosophies of Salvage
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University; Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
“Post-Jewish: Salvage Poetics Made Tangible"
Leora Auslander, Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor in the Departments of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity and History at the University of Chicago
Nov. 4: Roundtable III (9-10:30 a.m.)- Material and Textual…
Jeffrey Abt, Professor Emeritus at Wayne State University
Nov. 4: Roundtable III (9:00-10:30) Material and Textual Case…
Eliyana Adler, Professor of Judaic Studies at Binghamton University
Nov. 4: Roundtable III (9:00-10:30 am) Material and Textual Case…
Judith Lin, Fortunoff Archive Fellow at Yale University
Nov. 4: Roundtable III (9:00-10:30 am) Material and Textual Case…
Anne Eakin Moss, Associate Professor and Chair of the Slavic Department at the University of Chicago
Nov.4: Roundtable IV (10:45-12:15) Modern Literature and Traces of…
Jessica Kirzane, Assistant Instructional Professor in Yiddish in the Department of Germanic Studies
Nov.4: Roundtable IV (10:45-12:15) Modern Literature and Traces of…
Samuel Page, PhD Student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University
Nov.4: Roundtable IV (10:45-12:15) Modern Literature and Traces of…
Na’amit Sturm Nagel, PhD Student in the Department of English at the University of California-Irvine
Nov.4: Roundtable IV (10:45-12:15) Modern Literature and Traces of…
Jennifer Scappettone, Associate Professor in the University of Chicago Department of English Language and Literature
Sarah E. Fredericks, Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics; also in the College and Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization
Nov. 4: Roundtable V (2:45-3:15) Conserving the Past, Looking Toward…
Nathan Friedman, PhD Student in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago
Nov. 4: Roundtable V (2:45-3:15) Conserving the Past, Looking Toward…
