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Dr. Alessandro Grazi

Member of the academic staff, Department Abendländische Religionsgeschichte
Room: 03 305
Phone: +49 6131 39 39421
Fax: +49 6131 39 21050

E-Mail


Personal Details:

Born in Cento, Italy, in 1979. Since October 2018 Research Associate, Leibniz Institute of European History. 2016-2018 Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Amsterdam. 2015-2015 Italian Lecturer, Center for Foreign Languages, Justus Liebig University Giessen. 2012 PhD in the Humanities, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, with a dissertation titled "Patria ed Affetti. Jewish Identity and Risorgimento Nationalism in the Oeuvres of Samuel Luzzatto, Isaac Reggio, and David Levi". 2007-2008 Visiting Graduate Student, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 2005-2007 Research Master in Literary Studies (Highest Honors), University of Amsterdam, with specialization in Modern Jewish Cultural History. 1998-2004 Laurea in Preservation of the Cultural Heritage (Highest Honors), with specialization in Hebrew Paleography and Codicology, University of Bologna. 2000-2001 Overseas Student and Teaching Assistant, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA, USA.

Memberships:

European Association of Jewish Studies (EAJS)
American Association of Italian Studies (AIIS)
Italian Association for Jewish Studies (AISG)

Research Interests:

Modern Jewish Cultural History
Italian Jewish history and Culture
Jewish prayer books
Jewish printed books
Risorgimento
History of European Freemasonry
Hebrew Palaeography and Codicology

Selected Publications:

A. Grazi, Prophet of Renewal: David Levi, a Jewish Freemason and Saint-Simonian in nineteenth-century Italy, Leiden/Boston: Brill – Studies in Jewish History and Culture 73, 2022.
A. Grazi, “Wissenschaft des Judentums goes digital: Neue Möglichkeiten, Herausforderungen und Spannungen“, in Cursor - Zeitschrift Für Explorative Theologie, 2022.
(ed., with R. Dagnino), Believers in the Nation - European religious minorities in the age of nationalism (1815–1914), Peeters, Leuven, 2017.
»Diverging Jewish approaches to Italian nationalism and nation-building«, in L.S. Lerner – J. Druker (eds.), The New Italy and the Jews: From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi, in Annali d’italianistica 36 (2018).

Research projects:

"Minhag Italia": Variations of Jewishness in the 19th Century reflected in Italian prayer books. A digital analysis

The aim of the project is a digital and conceptual analysis of Italian Jewish prayer books of the 19th century. Prayer books are the most frequently printed works in Judaism. Each edition resulted in small textual changes. Using the tool of Optical Character Recognition, the project aims to filter out these variations. What social, political and cultural changes do they reveal?