Peer-Reviewed Articles
“The Medieval Mikveh of Córdoba,” in Between Flesh and Water: Documenting the Global Story of Jewish Women and Ritual Purity, edited by Anabella Esperanza and Laura Arnold Leibman. Peer-reviewed submission forthcoming.
“Inundated Obsolescence: Uncovering and un-salvaging historic Jewish pools in Iberia,” in New Directions in Salvage Poetics, edited by Sheila Jelen and Judith Lin. Peer-reviewed submission forthcoming.
“Pools of Living Water: Jewish Ritual Baths in the Early Modern Mediterranean World.” Routledge Resources Online - The Renaissance World. Peer-reviewed submission forthcoming.
“Uncovering the Ritual Baths and Women’s Balcony of Toledo’s Jewish Quarter,” in Jewish Women in Global Perspective: A Documentary History, edited by Elissa Bemporad, Dina Danon, Federica Francesconi, and Elizabeth Imber. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Publication forthcoming.
“The Jewish Baths of Siracusa: A Critical Analysis of a Re-Sacralized Ritual Landscape.” Proceedings of the Associazione Italiana di Storia Urbana International Conference: The crossroad city. Relations and exchanges, intersections and crossing points in urban realities. Open-access version available online.
“The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do at The Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, New York”. Museum Worlds: Advances in Research (Berghan Journals). 12: 203-212. July 2024. Open-access version available here: https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2024.120117.
“The Bisbee-Douglas Jewish Cemetery: An Ongoing Study in Historic Preservation.” Cochise County Historical Journal, 48 (1): 35-38. Spring/Summer 2018.
Book reviews
“Review: Too Jewish or Not Jewish Enough: Ritual Objects and Avant-Garde at the Jewish museum of New York by Jeffrey Abt.” Museum Worlds: Advances in Research (Berghan Journals). Publication forthcoming.
Other publications
“Inundated obsolescence: Uncovering and un-salvaging historic Jewish pools in Iberia,” in New Directions in Salvage Poetics, edited by Sheila Jelen and Judith Lin (University of Chicago). Submission forthcoming.
“Translation and summary of M. G. Simancas’ Las Sinagogas de Toledo y el Baño Litúrgico Judío (Madrid, 1929), “ in Jewish Women in Global Perspective: A Documentary History, edited by Elissa Bemporad, Dina Danon, Federica Francesconi, and Elizabeth Imber. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Publication forthcoming.
“The Bisbee-Douglas Jewish Cemetery: An Ongoing Study in Historic Preservation.” Cochise County Historical Journal, 48 (1): 35-38. Spring/Summer 2018.
For papers and lectures, see CV.
Troubled waters: Jewish heritage flows and the spectral mikveh (2019-ongoing)
Mikva’ot, also known as Jewish “ritual baths,” feature prominently in state sponsored and grassroots heritage projects across Israel and Palestine, Italy, Poland, and Spain. Whether flowing or desiccated, the historic pools are increasingly deployed by private and public actors, and their critics, across diverse geographical contexts for political, educational, and cultural purposes as sites of living memory. Nationalistic projects that center mikva’ot and their preservation betray the high stakes of heritage fabrication and its profound implications for local communities and the historical record. Drawing on multi-sited, ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2019-2023, this interdisciplinary, critical heritage study throws light on contradictions in place-based statecrafting and memory work rooted in polarizing constructions of Jewish history and rhetorics of unearthing and (un)belonging in the wake of state violence. It takes as it point of departure the various ways in which state and municipal authorities, private stakeholders, and community actors formulate the interpretive potential of mikveh sites for a general, largely touristic, public. These stewards-cum-interpreters, whose professions range from tour guides to civil servants to community leaders, play a significant role in the perpetuation and promulgation of place-based, mikveh-centered narratives of Jewish presence and absence. This project examines the circuitous and often troubled relationships between and across these heritage landscapes. It also probes the manifold possibilities they present for rethinking reconciliatory and redemptive narratives surrounding Jewish heritage in Europe and the Middle East. It does so to present critical openings for understanding the potentiality of water and water-related sites as forms of shared inheritance beyond the limitations of heritage preservation paradigms, and in ways that see sites of memory beyond nationalistic rhetorics of ownership, extraction, and commodification.
Interactive map showcasing various alleged mikveh sites. Hundreds of additional sites exist and will be added over time. Click for details about a site’s location and description.
Podcasts
Cornell Institute for Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS) podcast with Robert Bevan, 10/24/23: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/radio-ciams-with-robert-bevan/id1481003309?i=1000632454487
Cornell Institute for Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS) podcast with Lynn Meskell, 4/21/22: https://soundcloud.com/user-664136257/radiociams-with-lynn-meskell
Documentary film in production.