Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speaker: Professor Devin Naar

Sephardic Studies Program Chair, Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies

Education
Ph.D. Stanford University

Biography
Dr. Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Associate Professor of History, and faculty at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. From New Jersey, Dr. Naar graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis and received his Ph.D. in History at Stanford University. He has also served as a Fulbright fellow to Greece.

His first book, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. The book won the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Research Based on Archival Material and was named a finalist in Sephardic Culture. It also won the 2017 Edmund Keeley Prize for best book in Modern Greek Studies awarded by the Modern Greek Studies Association. It was translated into Greek by Alexandria Press in Athens in 2018.

As a fellow in the Society of Scholars at the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington in 2013-2014, Dr. Naar began his second book project, Reimagining the Sephardic Diaspora. This book explores the dispersal of Sephardic Jews from the dissolving Ottoman Empire during the early twentieth century and the creation of new Sephardic communal hubs in Europe and the Americas—including Seattle. By focusing on the multiple directions of transnational migration, the links Sephardic Jews retained with their native communities, and the relationships they developed with other Jews and migrants from the Mediterranean, this project compels us to reconceptualize the geographic and theoretical lines between the “old world” and the “new.”

At the UW, Dr. Naar teaches courses linked to his areas of research, including modern Jewish history; Jewish culture from antiquity until today; Sephardic history and culture; the history and memory of the Holocaust; relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims in lands of the former Ottoman Empire; migrations from the Mediterranean world to the Americas in the twentieth century; and a graduate seminar on Jews, Cities, and Empires. He also supervises MA and PhD students in fields such as modern Jewish history and culture, Sephardic Studies, and transnational studies

Keynote Speaker: Professor Aron Rodrigue

Daniel E. Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and History, Burke Family Director of the Bing Overseas Studies Program John Henry Samter Fellow in Undergraduate Education

Education
Ph.D., Harvard University, History

Biography
Aron Rodrigue is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He is the Burke Family Director of the Bing Overseas Studies Program. His scholarly research and teaching focuses on the history of the Ottoman Empire and southeastern Europe in the 19th and the 20th centuries with special focus on the Jews and other minorities in the period of transition from empire to nation-states. His books and other publications focus on the political, cultural, and socio-economic transformations that led to the making of modern identities in the region and to the decline and displacement of ethnic and religious minorities. His last book, edited with Valerie Mcguire. is Italian Fascism in Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands, 1922-1944 which has just been published. He has received numerous awards and fellowships and was honored in 2013 as Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of France. Aron Rodrigue has been at Stanford since 1991 and has served in many leadership roles such as Chair of the History Department and the Director of the Stanford Humanities Center.