Leading Sephardic Educators at SAC 2019!
We’re excited to announce that Dr. Devin E. Naar, the Isaac Alhadeff Chair of Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington, and Dr. Bryan Kirschen, Assistant Professor of Linguistics Program; Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Binghamton, will both be joining us for the first time this summer at the Sephardic Adventure Camp! Both are leading scholars in the fields of Sephardic history, culture, and Ladino language in the United States and have garnered national recognition as some of the most important individuals working in the field of Sephardic Studies today.
Each one of our visiting scholars will be joining us for a 3-day period at camp, directly interacting with campers and teaching them the basics of Ladino, leading experiential Sephardic history sessions, and much more. They’ll be able to act as young Sephardic role models to our campers and help teach them the beauty of our collective Sephardic heritage. Their presence at camp is just one part of our Sephardic NextGen Project at Camp, a special initiative to help make Sephardic history and culture come alive at SAC. This Project has been made possible in part from support from the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and the Samis Foundation.
Dr. Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Associate Professor of History, and faculty at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Born and raised in New Jersey, Dr. Naar graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis and received his Ph.D. in History at Stanford University. He has also served as a Fulbright fellow to Greece. His first book, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. The book won the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Research Based on Archival Material and was named a finalist in Sephardic Culture. It also won the 2017 Edmund Keeley Prize for best book in Modern Greek Studies awarded by the Modern Greek Studies Association. Dr. Naar’s family is originally from Salonica, Greece and is so passionate about Sephardic culture and heritage that he’s even teaching his own 4-year-old and baby ijikos (children) how to speak Ladino!
Dr. Bryan Kirschen is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at Binghamton University in New York; he received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His areas of expertise are Judeo-Spanish and Sociolinguistics. Bryan has organized and taught dozens of Judeo-Spanish workshops from Los Angeles, where he founded the student group ucLADINO, to New York City, where he spearheads Ladino Day programming with the Sephardic Brotherhood of America. In 2017, he was selected by the New York Jewish Week as one of its “36 Under 36” for his work on (and in) Judeo-Spanish. He currently serves at the director of the National Authority of Ladino’s American Shadarim delegation.
Mashallah! We are so grateful they will be joining us at camp this summer and are just counting done the days until August 1!
