The Rise and Fall of the New World

December 18

14:00-16:00

Greetings: Miri Shefer-Mossensohn, Head of the School of Historical Studies,
Tel Aviv University
New World, New Thought, New Vision
Chair: Shaul Katzir, Tel Aviv University
• Raz Chen-Morris, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
To See the World Anew: Optics and Science in Early
17th Century Europe
• Wael Abu-ʿUksa, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Concept of Civilization in Arabic and Its Demise
• Dan Orbach, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Lost in Translation? The Japanese Discovery of
Western Military Thought

16:00-16:30 Coffee Break

16:30-18:30

New Emotions, New Sensibilities, New Crises
Chair: Ori Preuss, Tel Aviv University
• Andrei Zorin, University of Oxford
Russian Emotional Culture of the Late Eighteenth–Early Nineteenth
Centuries: The Rise of Literature
• Michael Zakim, Tel Aviv University
New Diseases in the Age of Capital
• Billie Melman, Tel Aviv University
A Past for the Modern World: The Interwar Imperial Order, Imperial
Crisis, and the Emergence of a “Regime of Antiquities”

December 19

9:00-11:30

Rediscovering the New World(s)
Chair: Israel Gershoni, Tel Aviv University
• Ori Sela, Tel Aviv University
China’s Early-Modern (Re-)Discovery of the
‘West’ and the Agents Thereof
• Jacob Raz, Tel Aviv University
The Resale of Asian Mysticism: Passes and Bypasses
on Its Journey to the West
• Vera Tolz, The University of Manchester, UK
Re-negotiating Cultural Diversity: The Rise and Endurance
of Nationality, National Religion and Race in Modern Russia
and its Empire
• Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago
An Old/New Colonial World: The Rise of Arab Discourses

11:30-12:00 Coffee Break

12:00-14:00

From a New World to a New Order
Chair: Iris Rachamimov, Tel Aviv University
• Rudolf Kučera, Masaryk Institute and Archive, Czech Academy of
Sciences, Prague
Common Past, Diverging Futures: Physical Violence and the Visions
of the New Order in Austria and Czechoslovakia after the First
World War
• Amir Teicher, Tel Aviv University
The Biology of the Hidden and the Creation of the
Nazis’ New Order
• Dina Moyal,Tel Aviv University
Soviet Russia as a New Law and Order Project

15:00-17:00

Dismantling the New Order, Deconstructing the New World
Chair: Sagi Schaefer, Tel Aviv University
• Alexander Etkind, European University Institute, Florence
Dismantling Stalinism, Deconstructing Utopia
• Muriel Blaive, Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna
Real Existing Post-Socialism: The Czech Politics of Totalitarianism
• Lea David, Marie Curie Fellow, School of Sociology UCD, Dublin
In the Aftermath of the Collapse of Yugoslavia: Stuck between
Human Rights and Nationalism

17:00-17:15 Coffee Break

17:15-18:30

Concluding Round-Table
Chair: Dina Moyal, Tel Aviv University