Joint Projects (2025-2026)
Biblical Modernities
Principal Investigators: Beth Berkowitz (Department of Religion, Barnard College/Columbia University), Ofer Dynes (Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University), Rebecca Kastleman (Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University)
Biblical Modernities is a collaborative forum for scholars at Columbia, Barnard, Union Theological Seminary, and other universities to explore the reception, interpretation, and exegesis of biblical texts in modernity. In the fall, we will discuss the Book of Job in the context of its modern reception, preceded by a public keynote lecture by Carol Newsom on twentieth-century scholarship on Job. In the spring, we will discuss the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation, to be followed by a spring symposium open to the public. The aim of Biblical Modernities is to develop an ongoing transdisciplinary conversation among faculty working on biblical cultures, religion and literature, secularization studies, and adjacent areas of research. We also wish to spark new pedagogical approaches to the Bible in modernity. Finally, at a moment when the Bible has heightened significance to political discourse in the United States, we wish to engage with broader university publics to consider the pathways through which biblical literature has been transmitted, elevated, translated, dismissed, transmediated, and otherwise read critically and creatively in modernity.
Environment, Craft, Language, Culture, and Knowledge Across the Americas
Principal Investigators: Pamela Smith (Department of History, Columbia University), Caterina Pizzigoni (Department of History, Columbia University), and Alessandra Russo (Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University).
This workshop focuses on the connections between local environments, the embodied techniques, skills, and knowledge systems that emerge from them, and their expression in Indigenous languages and cultural practices. Activities will be centered around the fall 2025 residency of dyer-weaver Bertha Estrada Huipe and her son and assistant Mateo Estrada Rodriguez from Ahuirán, Michoacán, Mexico.
Three public events will explore the relationship between Indigenous language revitalization and art; the environmental harms of the contemporary textile industry; and the intersection between artistic making and scientific knowing.
Students enrolled in the Making and Knowing Project's laboratory seminar will work directly alongside Estrada Huipe and Estrada Rodriguez, learning about the materials for creating natural colors, dyeing techniques, and weaving on a backstrap loom. Through these sessions, students will begin to uncover and explore the environmental, cultural, chemical, historical, and tacit knowledge embedded in craft practices. Students will build upon this experience throughout the remainder of the semester through a final research project that will explore connected topics through historical reconstruction, text-based research, tutorials, or media projects. Select projects will be shared via the Project's Research and Teaching Companion, which provides hands-on learning resources, tools, and examples for educators on any budget or scale.
“There’s no law for that”: sexual and gender-based violence at the intersection of Jewish and secular law
Principal Investigator and co-convenor: Jennifer S. Hirsch (Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health)
Co-convenor: Clare Huntington (Columbia Law School)
This convening will bring legal and social science scholars together with advocates, affected community members, and government stakeholders for a policy-oriented pre-publication reading of Dr. Jennifer Hirsch’s book tentatively titled You Can’t Say No: Marriage, Sex, and Reproduction Among Haredi Jews. At the convening we will discuss findings related to experiences of harm in marriage – specifically, marital, sexual, and reproductive coercion; other forms of intimate partner violence; discrimination against sexual minorities; and denial of parental access to children. The book (as well as multiple articles in preparation) presents findings from the Marriage, Orthodoxy, and a Vision of Empowerment (MOVE) research and action project, for which IRCPL provided launch-event support in the autumn of 2023.The convening will provide an interdisciplinary translational moment to use these research findings – combined with the lived experience of convening participants who are themselves Charedi Jews – as a jumping off point to consider strategies to prevent and respond to the experiences of intimate harm described in the book. With sessions organized by topic, the day will generate an action agenda, co-produced by scholars, advocates, community members, and government stakeholders, and a law review article.