The Program in Jewish Studies is delighted to welcome Beverly Weber, Associate Professor of German and Slavic Languages and Literatures and Jewish Studies, to the Program.
Professor Weber grew up in southwestern Minnesota and earned her PhD in Comparative Literature and a graduate certificate in Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; MA degrees in Comparative Literature and German from the Pennsylvania State University; and a BA with majors in English and German from Gustavus Adolphus College. Her research and teaching interests in Jewish Studies primarily center on contemporary racisms in Europe, with an emphasis on Germany. On leave for the Fall 2015 semester, Professor Weber is currently working on a range of upcoming projects, including a talk on post-secularism and precarity in Europe, a co-authored project on representations of intimacy in contemporary European cinema, and a book manuscript on the relationship between racializations and conceptions of human rights in contemporary Europe.
Professor Weber's research and teaching interests include the intersections of race, gender, and migration in Germany and Europe; comparative studies of racialization; digital activism; contemporary visual cultures; contemporary German literature and culture; representations of the Holocaust; and Islam in Europe. Her interdisciplinary work is informed by transnational feminist cultural studies frameworks, with a current focus on theories of precarity and intimacy and incorporates analysis of popular media, literature, and film.
Her first book, Violence and Gender in the “New” Europe: Islam in German Culture, examines how current thinking about Islam and gender violence prohibits the intellectual inquiry necessary to act against a range of forms of violence. It then analyzes ways in which Muslim women participate in the public sphere by thematizing violence in literature, art, and popular media. Her current project explores the entanglements of racialized histories and European discourses of rights in contemporary culture. She is also working on another project with Maria Stehle examining representations of intimacy and Europeanness in contemporary film.
When asked about what she felt was the biggest highlight of joining the Program, Professor Weber replied "This is a wonderfully supportive and stimulating intellectual community!"