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Jewish women in pre-modern Italy: Magic, medicine and the inquisition

Project description

A closer look at the lives of Medieval Jewish women

Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the JeWit project seeks to reconstruct the history of Jewish women in medieval and early modern Italy based on medico-magical traditions related to childbirth and the female body. JeWit uses a new interdisciplinary methodology which conceptualises Jewish women’s culture in relation to oral transmission, local dynamics and cross-cultural exchange, while studying manuscripts of Jewish magic vis-a-vis Jewish and non-Jewish medical texts, Italian archival sources, inquisitorial records and artistic objects. This research will underscore key aspects in the intellectual history and material culture of pre-modern Italian Jewry, unveiling important dynamics in the Jewish-Christian cultural transfer concerning magic and medicine. Furthermore, it will promote a revaluation of magical knowledge within the broader landscape of medieval science.

Objective

The comprehensive objective of JeWit is to provide the first historical reconstruction of Jewish women’s everyday life and material culture in medieval and early modern Italy based on medico-magical traditions related to procreation, childbirth and other matters associated with the female body. Despite recent advances in the study of Jewish magic, gender, and Jewish-Christian relations, integrated in-depth research on Jewish women through the lens of medico-magical texts and from a perspective which considers local, oral-aural, and cross-cultural dynamics of knowledge transmission has been mostly neglected. Using a sophisticated methodology which integrates for the first time in-depth analysis of different types of sources (i.e. Jewish and non-Jewish manuscripts, archival documents, material and artistic evidence), JeWit seeks to: a) make accessible for the first time in a commented edition a selection of the most relevant manuscript excerpts on Jewish childbirth techniques circulated in pre-modern Italy; b) detect patterns of continuity, rupture and change in the dissemination of Jewish medico-magical lore related to childbirth during the shift from late antiquity to the medieval era and in the transfer from the East to the West; c) assess the boundaries between Jewish magic and science in medieval and early modern Italy; d) unravel traces of the sense of childbirth as experienced by pre-modern Italian Jewish woman that occasionally survive encapsulated in the texts, thus contributing to a more inclusive intellectual and cultural history of Italian Jewry and fostering large-scale debates on women’s well-being, diversity and inclusion, religious and cultural identity. After prestigious postdoctoral positions in Israel, the U.S. and Europe, a MSCA-PF at EPHE in Paris under the guide of Nicolas Weill-Parot will allow me to establish my scholarly independence, remarkably expanding my career prospects toward a consolidated academic position.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01

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Coordinator

ECOLE PRATIQUE DES HAUTES ETUDES
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 211 754,88
Address
RUE FERRUS 4-14
75014 Paris
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

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