Rutgers: Jewish Studies Faculty Seminar, Eve Krakowski

The Jewish Studies Faculty Seminar presents:

Eve Krakowski (Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University).

“Young Wives between the Courtroom and the Bedroom: Jewish Marriage Agreements in Twelfth-century Egypt”

Tuesday, February 16, 2016, 10:30 am – 12:00 noon, followed by lunch
Seminar Room, 12 College Avenue (Bildner Center)

Open to faculty and graduate students

Beginning in the early twelfth century, Jewish marriage documents preserved in the Cairo Geniza begin to feature personal stipulations: promises by both spouses, but especially husbands, to give the other specific personal and financial rights in marriage. This paper will examine how these documents shaped married women’s intimate position within households, and why. Until now, the new marriage agreements have mostly been read as top-down rabbinic products that testify to women’s protection by a maturing Jewish communal infrastructure in twelfth-century Fustat (old Cairo). I will argue that they illustrate something quite different: a socially contingent Jewish legal system that allowed a woman’s own male relatives pride of place in deciding how she could live as a wife-not only when a marriage was arranged, but also after it had begun.

http://jewishstudies.rutgers.edu/faculty-information

Lunch will be served so rsvp if you can attend:

[email protected]