Middle Eastern and North African Jews and the Birth of Modern Fashion: A Hidden History – Julia P. Cohen

In this talk, historian Julia Phillips Cohen discusses the unknown role that Jews from the eastern and southern Mediterranean played in the shaping of modern couture. Following two fashion houses run by an interconnected network of North African and Middle Eastern Jews in fin-de-siècle Paris, the talk reveals the participation of these firms in a global web of makers, suppliers, and designers stretching from Algiers and Constantinople to Cairo, Tabriz and Kyoto.

Julia Phillips Cohen is an Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her publications include the books Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) and Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 1700-1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), co-authored and edited with Sarah Abrevaya Stein, as well as articles in the American Historical Review, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Modern History, Jewish Social Studies and Jewish Quarterly Review. She is currently at work, together with Devi Mays, on a book exploring a forgotten network of North African and Middle Eastern Jews in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe.

Tuesday, May 12, 2026 • 306 Royce Hall • 2 PM

Middle Eastern and North African Jews and the Birth of Modern Fashion: A Hidden History

Julia P. Cohen (Vanderbilt)
Moderator: Aomar Boum (UCLA)

Al Finci Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies
Cosponsored by the Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies

RSVP