From Tzivi’s Feb ’11 Spotlight:
Historian Julia Phillips Cohen of Vanderbilt University gave a fascinating lecture at the University of Chicago last month called “Sephardi Jews and Imperial Belonging in the Late Ottoman Empire.” Although Cohen comes from an Ashkenazi background, she told me she grew up in California where “Spanish was all around me,” and this proved useful as she found herself increasing drawn to the “recent revitalization of Ladino Studies” in graduate school.
Cohen is currently working with Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein of UCLA on a new book called The Sephardic Studies Reader: 1730-1950 intended to improve our understanding of “the diverse historical experiences of modern Jewries.” While we wait, I highly recommend Stein’s first book Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (a finalist for the Koret Jewish Book Award in 2004).
