Adjunct Professor
Ph.D.: Columbia University, 2012
Department Member Since: 2010
Michal Friedman specializes in Jewish Diasporic history, especially that of Sephardic and Spanish speaking Jewish commmunities, and in Spanish history and culture.
Her teaching and research specifically focus on the historical coexistence (or “convivencia”) of religious and ethnic minorities in Spain, the modern and contemporary recovery of this historical legacy and its relevance to debates over national and transnational identities, immigration and tolerance/intolerance in contemporary Europe, and the Americas. Her work also explores discourses of otherness, Jewishness and cultural hybridity in the formation of Hispanic identities and the particular discourse of “Hispanidad” (or Hispanism).
She has taught courses on Jewish, Spanish and Latin American history and culture, as well as Hebrew language, at Columbia University, the University of Oaklahoma, the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and Pittsburgh's Academy of Jewish Learning.
Her doctoral dissertation (Columbia University), “Recovering Jewish Spain: The Emergence of Modern Sephardic Studies in Spain (1845-1940)” is a study of initiatives to recover the Jewish past and the development of Sephardic Studies in Spain from 1845 to 1940. Drawing upon extensive research conducted in Spain and the U.S. she examines Spain’s Royal Academy of History and its affiliated institutions, as well as some of Spain’s major universities and research centers, concluding with the establishment of the Arias Montano Institute of Sephardic Studies at Spain’s premier academic research institute, the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. On a deeper level, her study demonstrates the ways the Jewish past became central in efforts to construct a Spanish Patria, through its appropriation and integration into the nation’s official national historical narrative, or historia patria. The construction of this history was hotly contended, as historians and politicians brought Spain’s Jewish past to bear on the struggle over the establishment of a Liberal constitutional polity, in debates over religious and national identity, and in expressions of the ideological and political anxieties generated by the loss of Spain’s colonial Empire. Moreover, her dissertation illustrates how the recovery of the Jewish past connected—via a Spanish variant of the so-called “Jewish question”—to nationalist political and cultural movements such as Neo-Catholicism, Orientalism, Regenerationism, Hispanism, and Fascism. She contextualizes her analysis in a study of parliamentary debates, public commemorations of Sephardic historical figures, and Sephardist and philo-Sephardic campaigns designed to expand the political and cultural borders of Spain.
Michal Friedman was awarded a Fulbright-I.I.E. grant for dissertation research in Spain as well as dissertation research grants from the Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain’s Ministry of Culture & United State’s Universities, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Maurice Amado Foundation.
Michal, a native of Israel, who spent extensive periods living, studying and conducting research in Spain and Yucatan, Mexico, is also the Co-Founder and Principal Advisor to “Jóvenes Sin Nombres” a Pittsburgh based Latino community and arts youth organization and collective. JSN focuses on arts and cultural projects that address issues around immigration, citizenship and the border and is affiliated with the Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University. Recently, JSN created Pittsburgh's first Latino mural, on the storefront of the Latino Family Center on Murray Avenue in Pittsburgh’s East End Squirrel Hill neighborhood, in collaboaration with the Carnegie Museum of Art, CAS, ArtUP, and the Hiawatha Project . The group is currently collaborating with the Hiawatha Project and its artistic director (and CAS artist in residence), Anya Martin, on the production of "Camino", a theatrical piece dealing with the US for profit immigrant detention centers, inspired by the lives of two members of JSN.
| Topics in the Jewish Diaspora: Jewish-Latin America |
| Iberian Encounters: Christians, Muslims and Jews in Spain |
Contact Info
Department of History
Wean Hall 4620
P: 412.268.8375
F: 412.268.1019
mrf25@andrew.cmu.edu
Home