Maandag 6 juli 2026 om 18.00 uur
Flora Cassen - Brandeis University
in gesprek met Theodor Dunkelgrün (Universiteit Antwerpen)
Lezing in het Engels, georganiseerd als publieke avondlezing in het kader van de Zomerschool “Jewish Studies ‘On Edge’”.
Lezing in lokaal C.001, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerpen.
Deelname is gratis.
Inschrijven via e-mail: ijs@uantwerpen.be.
A poignant blend of memoir and history, Stained Glass explores Jewish identity in post-Holocaust Europe, confronting the persistence of antisemitism across generations and continents.
Drawing on her upbringing in Antwerp’s Jewish community and her grandparents’ escape from Nazi-occupied Europe to the Belgian Congo, Cassen writes from within a past in which powerlessness rubbed shoulders with power. From her later life in the United States, she considers Jewish life in Europe as a mirror that reflects enduring questions about vulnerability and belonging.
Stained Glass asks what it means to leave Europe behind and to encounter in American Jewish life a vitality that is strikingly beautiful yet never fully settled.
Flora Cassen is the Lavine Family Director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies and the director of the Sarnat Center for the Study of Antijudaism at Brandeis University. Her scholarly work explores various aspects of early modern Jewish life in Italy and the Spanish Empire, including anti-Judaism, dress, travel, espionage, and food. Her book, Marking the Jews in Renaissance Italy, published by Cambridge University Press, examines the history of the yellow badges and hats Jews were compelled to wear in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Bridging the gap between academia and the general public, Cassen’s writing has also appeared in publications such as Haaretz, Slate, and Smithsonian Magazine. Flora Cassen was born and raised in Antwerp and went to university in Brussels.