Jewish Citizenship on Trial: Litigating Belonging in between Tunisia and Italy

The Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies presents Granovsky-Gluskin Lecture in Jewish Studies "Jewish Citizenship on Trial: Litigating Belonging in between Tunisia and Italy" on Monday, January 20, 2025.

In the winter of 1873, Nissim Shamama, a wealthy Jew from Tunisia, died suddenly in his palazzo in Livorno, Italy. Nissim’s death initiated a fierce lawsuit over his large estate. Before Nissim’s riches could be disbursed among his aspiring heirs, Italian courts had to decide which law to apply to his estate—a matter that depended on his nationality. Was Nissim an Italian citizen? A subject of the Bey of Tunis? Had he become stateless? Or was his Jewishness also his nationality? Determining to which state Nissim belonged took a decade-long legal battle involving Jews, Muslims, and Christians across the Mediterranean. The study of this lawsuit helps us rethink the history of belonging through the stories of those whose very existence challenged emerging conceptions of modern citizenship.

Bio:
Jessica Marglin is Professor of Religion, Law, and History, and the Ruth Ziegler 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 emphasis on law.  She is the author of Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (Yale University Press, 2016) and The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship across the Modern Mediterranean (Princeton University Press, 2022).

* All lectures are free and open to the public. Seating is on a first come first served basis.