Verena Kasper-Marienberg

Bio

Verena Kasper-Marienberg received her BA and MA in Rhetorical Studies and History from the University of Tübingen, Germany. She earned her PhD at the University of Graz, Austria, in 2009 in History and Historical Museology (Public History). Her first book focused on the defense of Jewish autonomy at the Viennese imperial court during the reign of Joseph II (1765-1790). In 2012, the book won the Rosl-und Paul Arnsberg Prize, which is the highest prize given in Germany in Jewish Studies. She held a postdoctoral fellowship in Israel (2009/2010) as well as an Institute fellowship at the Frankel Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) in 2013/2014 and at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in 2018/2019.

Website: https://ncsu.academia.edu/VerenaKasperMarienberg

Teaching and Research Interests

Verena Kasper-Marienberg’s research focuses on the intersection of Jewish and Christian communities in the early modern period in Europe. She is especially interested in questions of legal practice, gender relations, and socio-economic structures in early modern societies. Currently, she is completing a book about the daily life of the Frankfurt Jewish community in the 18th century as well as working on a new study on the rural Jewry of Bohemia after the 30-Years War. She has published on a number of topics like Jewish female litigation, criminal history, Jewish-Christian shared spaces, and the media (re)presentation of early modern political events. In her teaching, she focuses on early modern European history, Jewish religion and culture, minority and migration history, early modern autobiographies, the history of museums, and the rhetorical structure of political texts.

Projects

• Book project: Seeking Imperial Justice – Accounts of Conflict in 18th century Frankfurt Ghetto, under consideration at Indiana University Press/ Leo Baeck
• (Habilitation) Book project: Rural Jewry and Nobility – Case Studies from Late Seventeenth-Century Bohemia​​​​​​​

Funded Research

• Research Fellow at the Israel Institute of Advances Studies 2018-2019, Research Group  “Rethinking Early Modern Jewish Legal Culture: New Sources, Methodologies and Paradigms”
• EURIAS/ Marie Curie Fellow 2018-2019
• Gerda Henkel Foundation Research Grant (2018-2020), in cooperation with Prof. Edward Fram, Ben Gurion Univ., project title “Jewish Law in Early Modern Non-Jewish Courtrooms”
• Co-author in the (Franz Thyssen Foundation funded) book project: “History of the Jews in Central Europe: The Bohemian Lands“ (2016/2017)
• Gerda Henkel Foundation Research Grant (2010-2012) for “Jewish Martyrdom Without Persecution? The Murder of Gumpert May, Frankfurt am Main, 1781” (with Edward Fram), in: AJS Review 39:2 (2015), pp. 267-301.

Extension and Community Engagement

• Coordinator, NCSU Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Studies
• Co-Coordinator, North Carolina Jewish Studies Seminar

Publications

• “From Enlightenment to Emancipation,“ in Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law, edited by Christine Heyes (New York: Cambridge UP, 2017), 189-214. (=Cambridge Companion to Religions)
• “Jewish Martyrdom Without Persecution? The Murder of Gumpert May, Frankfurt am Main, 1781” (with Edward Fram) AJS Review 39,2 (2015): 267-301.
• “Jewish Women at the Viennese Imperial Supreme Court: A Case Study from the Eighteenth Century,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 21,2 (2014): 176-192
•  „vor Euer Kayserlichen Mayestät Justiz-Thron“. Die Frankfurter jüdische Gemeinde am Reichshofrat in josephinischer Zeit (1765-90) (Before Your Royal Majesty’s Throne of Justice:  The Frankfurt Jewish Community at the Imperial Aulic Council in the Josephine Era (1765-1790)) (Innsbruck/Wien/Bozen: Studienverlag, 2012) ISBN 9783706549745, 501 pages (=Schriftenreihe des Centrums für Jüdische Studien Graz, Vol. 19)
• “Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion als klassische Utopie? Eine rhetorische Textanalyse,” (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a Classical Utopia? A Rhetorical Analysis) in Die Fiktion von der jüdischen Weltverschwörung: Zu Text und Kontext der »Protokolle der Weisen von Zion«, edited by Eva Horn and Michael Hagemeister (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 26-50.

Area(s) of Expertise

Verena Kasper-Marienberg’s research focuses on the intersection of Jewish and Christian communities in the early modern period in Europe. She is especially interested in questions of legal practice, gender relations, and socio-economic structures in early modern societies. Currently, she is completing a book about the daily life of the Frankfurt Jewish community in the 18th century as well as working on a new study on the rural Jewry of Bohemia after the 30-Years War. She has published on a number of topics like Jewish female litigation, criminal history, Jewish-Christian shared spaces, and the media (re)presentation of early modern political events. In her teaching, she focuses on early modern European history, Jewish religion and culture, minority and migration history, early modern autobiographies, the history of museums, and the rhetorical structure of political texts.