April Comparative Law and Religion Event April Comparative Law and Religion Event: Dr Magdalena Dziaczkowska on Jewish-Catholic Marriages

Dr Magdalena Dziaczkowska is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University, currently a visiting scholar at KU Leuven. In the past, she conducted research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, Bethlehem University, Stellenbosch University, and Jagiellonian University. In her work she focusses on the history of interreligious relations, with a particular emphasis on lived Jewish-Catholic relations in the 20th century and on questions about interreligious encounters, identity, othering, the religious Other, antisemitism, nationalism and cultural and narrative memory.
 
The Workshop will take place digitally via Zoom
Date: April 16th, 14:00-16:00 (c.t.)
For registration, additional details and for the zoom link, please send an email to: 
antonia-wojaczek@uni-bonn.de
 
Description of the workshop
The workshop will give an overview of Dr Dziaczkowska’s research project on mixed couples. The goal of her study is to understand how Jewish-Catholic couples experienced their mixedness and navigated the period of intense intergroup tensions (interwar antisemitism, introduction of the communist regime) and Nazi necropolitics directed mostly against the Jewish spouses but extending also against Christian Poles. More specifically, the research seeks to understand the power relations and internal dynamic of a mixed couple in times of conflict. Moreover, it aims to describe the differences in the experience of men and women, their gender roles in this setting and the intersectionalities shaping their fates. In addition, it takes a closer look at identity negotiations and the relation of the spouses to their respective ingroups and outgroups (their spouse’s group). These questions are considered in the timeframe of the 1930s until the 1950s, thus, the period directly preceding, encompassing, and following the Holocaust. The study follows the experiences of these couples throughout the entire period and is limited to the Polish citizens, who either stayed in Poland or emigrated. Finally, it attempts to understand how their experiences relate to mixedness in other necropolitical contexts. Based on the analysis of interviews (oral and testimonies, and then extending to other egodocuments and archival records), Dr Magdalena Dziaczkowska is analyzing the trajectories of twenty couples, contextualizing their fates with other available sources.
The workshop will be divided in two parts. In the first part, Dr Dziaczkowska will present her study project and specific research questions such as: What intersectionalities facilitated the couples’ survival? What identity negotiations took place within the couples, and how they changed over time? What were the power relations within the couples? What were they related to? How and why were men and women treated when engaging in heterogamy?
The second part will be a guided question part with discussion and conversation.