https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/jewish_visual_culture
This special volume aims to explore new paths for the study of Jewish engagement with visual culture. The articles will consider a variety of ways in which Jews reflect on their experiences as Jews, and manifested their beliefs, desires, and fears, as producers, consumers, curators, and critics of visual arts. The growing interest in this field during the past decades has resulted in a number of studies, research groups, and journals dedicated to particular aspects of Jewish visual culture. In reconsidering this body of work, the objective of this volume is twofold: to present the latest developments in the field, including novel methodological approaches, new consequential findings, highlighting vital yet hitherto overlooked themes, etc.; and to contextualize these novelties within and vis à vis the existing literature on Jewish visual culture. The volume will thus culminate in a thorough examination of the field, which will function as an essential steppingstone for future studies on Jewish visual culture.
Recent studies have underscored the roles played by visual culture in everyday lives, in the imagination and in the self-perceptions of Jews—and in their interactions with non-Jews—in various historical settings. From ancient arrangements of religious and mundane objects to interior design, art, and architecture, visual symbolism has been recurrently applied to communicate, remember, and assign meanings in Jewish experiences. Modernity has introduced new spaces of Jewish visual culture—e.g., museums and monuments—as well as new practices of participation in such culture, namely, painting, photography, film, and television. These developments both catalyzed Jews’ integration and acculturation in non-Jewish societies and fundamentally contributed to the definition of Jewish nationalism, secularism, and new religious perceptions. These developments also granted curators, critics, and editors of visual culture significant influence on Jewish identity discourses and Jewish politics. In emphasizing the importance of such developments for Jewish experience in various contexts, this Special Issue will discuss new approaches to the study of Jewish visual culture, from antiquity to the 21st century.