Allyson Gonzalez will give a public lecture entitled “Performing the Sephardic: Jewish Modernity After the Mystique” on Monday, February 3, 4:30pm, in Swift Common Room.

What does it mean to think about religious studies through the lens of performance? This talk probes Jewish modernity by examining the “Sephardic”—a category referring to Jews who trace their lineage to the Iberian Peninsula. By turning to constructions of the Sephardic, including by the first Jewish artists and intellectuals to return to the peninsula since the 1492 expulsion, this talk explores performative aspects of modern Jewish practice and experience.

Allyson Gonzalez (Brandeis University, Ph.D; Univ. of Chicago, M.A.) is a U.S. Fulbright Fellow in Israel, affiliated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. One of two recipients of the New Voices in Jewish Studies Award from Columbia University and Fordham University (2018-2019), Gonzalez has held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University and Florida State University. A former Pulitzer Prize finalist as the lead writer of her newspaper team, Gonzalez has published several articles and translations, including most recently in the Jewish Quarterly Review. She is in the final stages of completing a book-length project that examines public performances of Jewishness and the construction of modern Spain.