Jessica Marglin (University of Southern California): "Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco"
Department: Jewish Studies
Date and Time: October 20, 2016 | 5:00 PM-6:30 PMEvent Location: Humanities Gateway 1010
Event Details
Jessica Marglin (University of Southern California, Los Angeles)
Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco
Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 5pm
Humanities Gateway 1010
Morocco went through immense upheaval in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Following the experiences of a Jewish family from Fez, this talk explores how the law helped to connect and ultimately divide Jews and Muslims during this critical period. Jessica Marglin charts how Jews successfully navigated the various Jewish, Islamic, and European legal institutions constituting Morocco’s pluralist system of law for decades—until colonial reforms abruptly curtailed their mobility. Drawing on a broad range of archival documents, this talk speaks to our understanding of contemporary relations between Jews and Muslims and changes the way we think about Jewish history, the Middle East, and the nature of legal pluralism.
Jessica Marglin is assistant professor of Religion and the Ruth Ziegler Early Career Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Southern California. She earned her PhD from Princeton and her BA and MA from Harvard. Her research focuses on the history of Jews and Muslims in North Africa and the Mediterranean, with a particular focus on law. Her book, Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco, will be published by Yale University Press in fall 2016.