Sephardic Trajectories Archives, Objects, and the Ottoman Jewish Past in the United States

Is writing the only way to narrate the story of the past?

Sephardic Trajectories, edited by Kerem Tınaz and Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano, brings together scholars of Sephardic and Ottoman history to discuss the role of family archives and new media in narrating the Ottoman Sephardic past in the US. This edited volume is inspired by the Sephardic Studies Collection at the University of Washington, which has aimed to digitize, preserve, and make available countless family heirlooms, papers, and personal objects that Ottoman Sephardic Jews in Seattle brought with them as they migrated to the United States.

Taking objects from the Sephardic Studies Collection as a starting point, the articles in this volume consider the role of private collections in the study of the Sephardic past in the US. To this end, the contributors present studies on Sephardic migration, Ottoman Sephardic music in Seattle, the international nature of Ottoman Sephardic literature and readership, deportation cases of Ottomans in the US; all while discussing the use of new media, digitization projects, research podcasts, and family archives.

Contributors to the work:

Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano, Ty Alhadeff, Benjamin Fortna, Chris Gratien, Maureen Jackson, Laurent Mignon, Devin Naar, Sam Negri, Özgür Özkan, Hannah Pressman and Kerem Tınaz

Kerem Tınaz is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Koç University.

Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano is an assistant professor in the Department of History at University of Pennsylvania.