Lecture program fall 2026
Upcoming lecture: "Graeco-Roman Antiquity and Hebrew Modernity: Beyond Jerusalem and Athens" (Dr. Giacomo Loi), Thursday 29 October 2026 at 18.00, room R.012, Rodestraat 14, 2000 Antwerp.
Upcoming lecture series: "Telling a European Story: The Making of Modern Hebrew Literature". In this free, six-part lecture series, you are invited to explore the fascinating world of Hebrew literature from the second half of the nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth. How did Europe’s cultural and intellectual climate, its multilingual environment, and the historical upheavals of the time shape Jewish writers who chose to tell their stories in Hebrew? Through the works of six influential authors, including Bialik, Agnon, and Vogel, Dr. Giocomo Loi will explore how they navigated the tensions between tradition and modernity, Jewish identity and European culture, and old worlds and new ideas. This is a fascinating opportunity to discover a literary tradition that not only emerged in Europe but was also profoundly shaped by it.
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Doctoral defence Thomas Froy, 20 April 2026
Abstract
How do we think about home today? What does it mean to ‘belong’? To call a place ‘one’s own’? Conversely, what is it like to be away from home? To feel as if you don’t belong? To feel unwelcome?
This dissertation attempts to answer such questions by examining ongoing debates in Jewish Thought concerning the notions of home and ‘dwelling’. I begin by unpacking the concepts of ‘Homeland’ and ‘Earth’ as they appear in current philosophical and political discourse. I turn to the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger and his work on ‘dwelling’, as an ideological forefather of both ideas. I focus, in particular, on his attempt to define dwelling as a way of being at home which is open to the ‘unfamiliar’. I tie this openness to traditional discourses of nationalism and current work in ecological and ecofeminist thought in order to show that, for Heidegger, the Earth is our Homeland, and dwelling within it means being open to the unfamiliarity of the world itself.
Against Heidegger, I turn to a Jewish tradition which centralises everyday life. I read Martin Buber’s dialogical thought, and his later Zionism, as a demand to think about the banal interactions which colour our domestic existence. The meaning of home is not found by abstraction to the scale of the national and the terrestrial, but in daily life. I interpret this as a simultaneous riposte to the notion of Homeland and an opening to ecological thought, inasmuch as this attention to the banal can entail an orientation to the materiality of existence itself.
In a similar way, I interpret Emmanuel Levinas’ early work as a call to think about the everyday life of the home itself: what do we do, most of the time, at home? Eating and sleeping. Being at home, for Levinas, is an essentially mundane, domestic activity. The final part of the dissertation engages with Jacques Derrida’s thinking on hospitality, where home is a place for hosting others. Being at home means hosting others.
I conclude my research with a reflection on Jewish Thought today, and the challenges and opportunities for thinking about home which remain as present and important as ever.
About
Welcome at the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp.
The Institute focuses on the academic study of Judaism from a variety of cultural disciplines, including history, philology, literary theory, religious studies, law, philosophy and sociology. The Institute is active in academic research, university education and educational services for a general public.
Each academic year, the Institute organizes more than twenty lectures by national and international experts. These Thursday evening lectures are aimed at a broad audience and are freely accessible. The Institute organizes language courses Yiddish and modern Hebrew, as well as reading groups.
The Institute also organizes academic conferences, seminars and workshops, often in cooperation with Belgian and international academic and cultural institutions.
The Institute is fully integrated into the University of Antwerp and is supported by the Ministry of Education of the Flemish Community. It was established in the autumn of 2001.
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