June 9 - 11, 2025. Fondazione Hallgarten-Franchetti, Villa Montesca, Italy.
Convened by Professor Tobias Brinkmann (Penn State University), Professor Abigail Green (Oxford), Dr. Luisa Levi d’Ancona Modena (Oxford), Dr. Silvia Davoli (Oxford), Dr. Fabrizio Boldrini (Hallgarten-Franchetti Foundation), Maria Rita Bracchini, (Hallgarten-Franchetti Foundation)
This conference takes the Jewish country house – an important manifestation of Jewish emancipation in many different parts of Europe - as a starting point for reconsidering the relationship between Jews, politics, economy and the land during the 19th and 20th centuries. In some countries, the countryside could be an incubator for antisemitic politics, in others it was an investment opportunity, and everywhere landownership held a social aspect for members of the Jewish economic elite seeking status, influence, and integration. This conference will explore those tensions.
Historians have tended to understand the relationship between Jews, politics and the land in terms of productivization, colonialism, and Zionism, with a particular focus on Eastern Europe and Palestine. By contrast, this conference will explore the role of Jews, particularly Jewish landowners - both men and women - in the modernization and stewardship of the countryside and rural communities: activities that were driven not by a preoccupation with the Jewish future, but rather by concern for the future of the rural worlds, landscapes and societies in which Jewish landowners now situated themselves.
Educational reform was also central to this agenda, from a variety of perspectives. In some cases, specific local experiences with innovative educational initiatives that targeted the poorer categories of children in a given locality also acted as a spur for broader ambitions aiming at the profound renovation of educational systems, with national and international impacts.
We also hope to explore the role of Jewish actors, networks and ideologies both in science and nature conservation, and in agricultural and social innovation at the local, national and international level. In this way, the conference aims to connect with phenomena like Zionism from an unfamiliar angle.
