Aviva Ben-Ur

Professor Ben-Ur is a historian specializing in Atlantic Jewish history, slavery studies, and the Ottoman diaspora. She is the author of Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries and Synagogues of Suriname: Essays (Hebrew Union College Press, 2012) and Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries of Suriname: Epitaphs (Hebrew Union College Press, 2009), both co-authored with Rachel Frankel, and Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History (New York University Press, 2009). 

Her latest book is Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651-1825 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020). 

A description can be viewed here: https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/16091.html 

A preview can be viewed here: https://hasepharadi.com/2019/11/17/the-centrality-of-slavery-jews-in-the-atlantic-world/

Her current project, funded by the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship, focuses on the ordeal of citizenship in Western Europe as experienced by thousands of Ottoman Jews, Christians, and Muslims during the first half of the twentieth century.

Her articles have appeared in the following journals: Journal of Global Slavery; Immigrants and Minorities; New West India Guide; Jewish Quarterly Review; Jewish Social Studies; American Jewish History; American Jewish Archives; Jewish History; and Studies in Bibliography and Booklore. Many of these publications can be found at: https://works.bepress.com/aviva_benur/

Professor Ben-Ur holds adjunct appointments in the Department of History and in the Programs in Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature.

Awards and Accolades

• Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship
• Leiden University, Institute for History
• Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen
• Leids Universiteits Fonds (Leiden University Fund)
• N.W. Posthumus Institute
• Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde [Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies Research]
• Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences
• U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program
• National Endowment for the Humanities
• American Council of Learned Societies/SSRC/NEH
• Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture
• John Carter Brown Library, Brown University

Courses Recently Taught

Judaic 102 The Jewish Experience II: Medieval to Modern Times

Judaic/MidEast 303 Israel Through the Ages: A Global History from Antiquity to 1948

Judaic 322 American Diversity

Judaic 323 Jewish Utopia/Dystopia

Judaic 324 Slavery in Comparative Religious Perspective

Judaic 325 Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages

Judaic 326 Sustainability in Comparative Religious Perspective

Judaic/MidEast 327 Jewish Food in Historical Perspective 

Judaic/MidEast 328 Mediterranean Mosaic: Ancient Civilizations, Then and Now

Judaic 343 American Jewish Diversity

Judaic 353 Sephardic Cultures & Literature of the Spanish Diaspora

Judaic 373 Jewish Travelers and Travel Liars

Judaic 375 The Jewish Experience in the Atlantic World

Judaic 494JI Jews in Greco-Roman Antiquity