Jewish History and Culture Beyond Borders

Exploring and challenging the academic lifework of Professor Joachim Schlör, this book provides a window into current developments and debates in Jewish cultural studies. Reflecting on Schlör’s biographical and from-below approach, this Festschrift considers how the ordinary and everyday remains essential for historical analysis of the human experience of modernity, forced migration, and the loss of a homeland, offering a vital synopsis of new research in urban and Jewish history in the process.

Jewish History and Culture beyond Borders brings together an international cast of renowned scholars from around the world to excavate Jewish experiences of modern Europe, urban topographies, and Jewish/non-Jewish relations through aspects that go beyond the traditional focus on either antisemitism or spheres of high culture and politics. Biographical, material, rural and transnational approaches are used, which together assemble theoretical reflections and introduce epistemological questions on dynamics in urban power structures, pluricultural everyday practices, and multi-layered experiences of (dis)location through bottom-up case studies.

Author Biography

Maja Hultman is Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is the author of Jewish Feelings in the City: Emotional Topographies and Power Relations in Modern Stockholm (forthcoming) and the co-editor, along with Joachim Schlör, of Virtual and Real-Life Spaces of Jewish Europe in the 21st Century (2025).

Susanne Korbel is Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Graz, Austria. She is the author of Auf die Tour! Jüdinnen und Juden in Singspielhalle, Kabarett und Varieté – Zwischen Habsburgermonarchie und Amerika (2021) and the co-editor, along with Philipp Strobl, of Mediations through Exile: Cultural Translation and Knowledge Transfer on Alternative Routes of Escape from Nazi Terror (2022). Claire Le Foll is Professor of East European Jewish History and Culture at University of Southampton, UK. She is the author of three monographs, including La Biélorussie dans l’histoire et l’imaginaire des Juifs de l’empire russe, 1772-1905 (2017). Johanna Rolshoven is Professor Emerita of Cultural Anthropology at University of Graz, Austria. She is the author and editor of several books in German, including Stadtforschung als Gesellschaftsforschung. Eine Einführung in die Kulturanalyse der Stadt (2021).