Indiana University Press Journals Weblog

A New Journal About Black Men

Despite the growth of black studies over the last few decades, no academic journal has sought to look across the full range of the contemporary lives and experiences of black men.

That is the thinking behind an ambitious new periodical, Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men. The new journal is set to debut in March, as a twice yearly publication from Indiana University Press. Developments in modern American life, and in the lives of black men around the world, make Spectrum timely, says one of its two editors, Judson L. Jeffries, a professor of African American and African studies at the Ohio State University.   READ MORE.

 

CFP: Land Ownership and Tenure

Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, Volume 5, Number 3 (Spring 2012)

Land Ownership and Tenure

Papers must be received by November 1, 2011 to be considered for publication in this issue. Please send manuscript publications to the managing editor: Leslie Shortlidge shortlidge.2@osu.edu. See Style Guidelines at www.raceethnicity.org. Submission of artwork for the cover that relates to the theme of the issue is welcome. See website for submission guidelines. Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts encourages and welcomes contributions by scholars, researchers, grassroots activists, policy advocates, and organizations.

UN-Habitat, The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, concluded that more than one billion people live without any security of tenure in informal settlements in “developing” countries. If “land is not just a resource to be exploited, but a crucial vehicle for the achievement of improved socioeconomic, biological, and physical environments” (FAO), then access to land ensures the security and health of the poor. The politics of access to and exploitation of land and natural resources assume fundamental relations of power control and the policy of social inclusion; however, both notions imply and consolidate that access to land and land ownership, particularly in the Global South, reflect broader patterns of intra-institutional dynamics that explain how marginality and socio-political exclusion take place within countries and on the global stage.

Asian African Literatures

Research in African Literatures Volume 42 Number 3, Asian African Literatures, Special Guest Editor, Gaurav Desai

Citing the long history of the presence of peoples from the Indian sub-continent in Africa, the National Museums of Kenya sponsored, in 2000, a special exhibit on the "Asian African Heritage."  This special issue of Research in African Literatures follows the lead of this exhibition by bringing together new essays by some of the leading scholars who have written on Asian African literatures in East and South Africa. The articles engage both with writers who are now considered canonical, such as M.G. Vassanji from Tanzania and Ahmed Essop from South Africa, as well as newer voices that have emerged over the past decade. A significant emphasis in the volume is on women writers who have traditionally been marginalized in such discussions. The volume is also interested in extending the discussion of Asians in Africa to include a consideration of Asian slavery in the Dutch Cape Colony which has, of late, received attention in the writings of Rayda Jacobs and Ishtiyaq Shukri. The editor’s introduction includes a genealogy of Asian African literary activity in the first half of the twentieth century as well as a bibliography of literary works by Asian African writers that will be of interest to readers new to the subject. Also included is an e-conversation between the guest editor, Gaurav Desai, and the award winning writer M.G. Vassanji.

Published nearly forty years after the world witnessed the mass expulsion of Asians by Idi Amin from Uganda, and a political context in which the Indian Ocean is increasingly seen to have become a center stage for international maritime policy, this special issue not only critically evaluates the historical and cultural legacies of Asians in East and South Africa, but also asks pertinent questions about citizenship, nationalism and diaspora.

Women in the Responsa Literature

NASHIM NO. 21: Women in the Responsa Literature, Consulting Editor: David Golinkin

The responsa literature – compilations of legal opinions written by rabbis in response to specific queries or cases – is one of the largest branches, if not the largest branch of Jewish literature. With their descriptions of actual cases that came before the rabbis, starting from about 500 CE and continuing right up to the present day, responsa are a fount of information about Jewish women on a host of topics, such as marriage, divorce, agunot (women who remain “chained” to missing husbands in the absence of a religious divorce), widows, fertility issues and child-rearing, women in the synagogue and women in business. This issue of Nashim includes articles about women in the responsa literature, focusing on a broad topic, a specific geographical area or a specific set of responsa. How are women portrayed? What can we learn about their lives? How were they viewed by rabbis and by their societies? Can we hear their own voices in the testimony they gave before religious courts (batei din)? How did and do these rulings affect their lives?

The articles that appear in this issue of Nashim can be conveniently divided into four categories. The first two articles, by Debby Koren and Julie Lieber, analyze responsa by two famous meshivim (responders): Rabbi David b. Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Spain, Israel and Egypt, 1479–1573), in a case of a woman who had lost her get (writ of divorce) as a result of the expulsion from Spain; and Rabbi Eleazar Horowitz (Vienna, 1803–1868), in two very unusual cases of women who had sex with men other than their husbands but claimed it was innocent (sic!).

The next three articles deal with the participation of Jewish women in public rituals and Torah study in the modern era. My own article is a timeline of 41 events related to this topic from 1845–2010, offering seven general conclusions that can be derived from it. Norma Joseph translates and analyzes a well-known 1976 responsum by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (Lithuania–New York, 1895–1986) regarding the permissibility of women wearing prayer shawls in the synagogue.  Jessica Rosenberg analyzes and compares three more recent teshuvot by Rabbis Mendel Shapiro, Gidon Rothstein and Shlomo Riskin regarding aliyot for women.

The following section features two debates relating to sensitive issues in the realm of medical ethics: abortion, and the use of hormones for religious rather than medical purposes. Alan Jotkowitz responds to a Hebrew article by Ronit Ir-Shai about abortion and maternal need in the responsa literature, with a brief response from Ir-Shai. Tova Ganzel and Dina Zimmerman write about the ethics of using hormones to delay ovulation in order to overcome “halakhic infertility” caused by the observance of the laws of nidah, with a response by Rabbi Haviva Ner-David.

Finally, Michael Pitkowsky offers a preliminary study relating to the effect of the internet on the responsa literature as a whole, by comparing the number and type of questions which women asked of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, of the Sefardic responder Rabbi Hayyim David Halevi (Israel, 1924–1998) and of the Hebrew website www.kipa.co.il.

These new studies barely scratch the surface of the topic of “women in the responsa literature,” but it is hoped that they will serve as a catalyst for future articles, dissertations and books on this neglected corpus, which can serve as a goldmine for Jewish women’s and gender studies.

David Golinkin is President of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, where he holds the Jerome and Miriam Katzin Chair in Jewish Studies and is also director of the Center for Women in Jewish Law. He has published some 40 monographs and edited volumes and 200 articles, including his book The Status of Women in Jewish Law: Responsa (Hebrew) and the volume Za‘akat Dalot: Halakhic Solutions for the Agunot of our Time (Hebrew), of which he is co-editor.