The Venice Ghetto: A Memory Space that Travels

by Chiara Camarda (Editor), Amanda K. Sharick (Editor), Katharine G. Trostel (Editor), James E. Young (Foreword by)

Overview

The Venice Ghetto was founded in 1516 by the Venetian government as a segregated area of the city in which Jews were compelled to live. The world's first ghetto and the origin of the English word, the term simultaneously works to mark specific places and their histories, and as a global symbol that evokes themes of identity, exile, marginalization, and segregation. To capture these multiple meanings, the editors of this volume conceptualize the ghetto as a "memory space that travels" through both time and space.

This interdisciplinary collection engages with questions about the history, conditions, and lived experience of the Venice Ghetto, including its legacy as a compulsory, segregated, and enclosed space. Contributors also consider the ghetto's influence on the figure of the Renaissance moneylender, the material culture of the ghetto archive, the urban form of North Africa's mellah and hara, and the ghetto's impact on the writings of Primo Levi and Marjorie Agosí­n.

In addition to the volume editors, The Venice Ghetto features a foreword from James E. Young and contributions from Shaul Bassi, Murray Baumgarten, Margaux Fitoussi, Dario Miccoli, Andrea Yaakov Lattes, Federica Ruspio, Michael Shapiro, Clive Sinclair, and Emanuela Trevisan Semi.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613768914
Publisher:	University of Massachusetts Press
Publication date:	01/28/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

CHIARA CAMARDA holds a PhD in Asian and African Studies from Ca' Foscari University of Venice. AMANDA K. SHARICK holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Riverside and is associate director for Harvard University's Graduate Commons Program. KATHARINE G. TROSTEL is assistant professor of English at Ursuline College.

Table of Contents

A Note on the Essays

Foreword
James E. Young

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Amanda K. Sharick and Katharine G. Trostel

Part I. The Archive: Rooted Memories
Chiara Camarda, Federica Ruspio, Amanda K. Sharick, and Katharine G. Trostel

1. Hebrew Books in the Venice Ghetto
Chiara Camarda

2. The Ghetto’s Archival Heritage
Federica Ruspio

Part II. The Blueprint: Global Archetypes (1516–2016)
Amanda K. Sharick and Katharine G. Trostel

3. Social and Economic Dimensions of Italian Jewish Public Life in the Age of the Ghetto
Andrea Yaakov Lattes

4. Disruptive Strategies in Post-Shoah Versions of The Merchant of Venice 
Michael Shapiro

5. The Ghetto of Venice: Clive Sinclair Discusses Venice, Judaism and Shylock
Clive Sinclair

Part III. The Map: A Memory Space that Travels 
Amanda K. Sharick and Katharine G. Trostel

6. Primo Levi, the Ghetto, and The Periodic Table
Murray Baumgarten

7. What the Mellah Was: Imagining the Moroccan Jewish Quarter
Emanuela Trevisan Semi and Dario Miccoli

Part IV. The Tourist: The Future of Memory 
Amanda K. Sharick and Katharine G. Trostel 

8. The Poetry of Marjorie Agosín: Writing-in-Place in the World’s First Ghetto
Katharine G. Trostel

9. Metaphor and Memory: A Conversation on the Making of the Film El Hara
Amanda K. Sharick and Margaux Fitoussi

Afterword: The Ghetto after the Plague
Shaul Bassi

Contributors

Index 

Editorial Reviews

"With cogent and compelling chapters organized to move the reader through a transhistorical and transnational context to highlight the ghetto's impact writ large, this volume will appeal to historians, literary critics, artists, and art historians of premodern and modern Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as Jewish studies scholars."—Dana E. Katz, author of The Jewish Ghetto and the Visual Imagination of Early Modern Venice

"A timely, conceptually rich collection based on new sources and translations that explore the ghetto as a palimpsest across time and space. An essential resource for students and scholars studying both the ghetto, in general, and the Venice Ghetto, in particular.”—Bryan Cheyette, author of The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction

From the Publisher