Writing Intersectional Travel History in Light of Early Jewish Writings

This presentation examines the recent rise of travel as a field of historical inquiry and critically evaluates widespread assumptions about travel as a gendered practice. Focusing on a neglected dimension of travel history—the motives, implementation, and outcomes of women’s mobility in early Jewish corpora from the Bible to Bar Kokhba—it challenges the notion that women were largely immobile in antiquity. Methodologically, it distinguishes between documentary sources, which point to plausible forms of women’s movement, and literary texts, which preserve cultural imaginaries of travel. It further argues that an intersectional approach to these sources highlights the complexity of travel and its potentially far-reaching consequences for women’s lives and social positioning. Prof. Uusimaki will share with us the results of her ERC project and the second hour of the seminar will be devoted to a broader discussion of studies on mobility and gender, as well as methodological challenges in researching slavery and other underrepresented groups.