Francesca Bregoli

Francesca Bregoli

Associate Professor

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Francesca BregoliFrancesca Bregoli

Early modern Jewish history, Sephardi history, Italy

Powdermaker Hall, Room 352-YY
Phone: 718-997-5410
Fax: 718-997-5359

Francesca Bregoli holds the Joseph and Oro Halegua chair in Greek and Sephardic Jewish Studies, and is Associate Professor of History at Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. She received a PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Jewish Art and Material Culture from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and her undergraduate degree in Hebrew and Jewish Studies from the University of Venice (Italy). Her research concentrates on eighteenth-century Italian and Sephardic Jewish history. Her current research looks at the creation and preservation of affective ties and bonds of obligation in trans-Mediterranean Jewish merchant families. She is the author of Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform (Stanford University Press, 2014; finalist for the National Jewish Book Award). She co-edited Tradition and Transformation in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Jewish Integration in Comparative Perspective (2010, special issue of Jewish History; with Federica Francesconi); Italian Jewish Networks from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries: Bridging Europe and the Mediterranean (Palgrave, 2018; with Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti and Guri Schwarz), and Connecting Histories: Jews and their Others in Early Modern Europe(Penn Press, 2019; with David B. Ruderman). Francesca serves as Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Education

PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 2007 (History)
MA, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2001 (Jewish Art and Material Culture)
Laurea, Universita’ Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, 1998 (Hebrew and Jewish Studies)

Research Interests

  • My research focuses on eighteenth-century Italian and Sephardi Jewish cultural and social history.
  • My first book — “Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform” (Stanford University Press, 2014; finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards in two categories) — provides a fresh view on Jewish interaction with Enlightenment culture and the reforming-absolutist state by focusing on the Jews of Livorno, a thriving free port on the Mediterranean Sea.
  • My new project focuses on the creation and preservation of ties in transnational Jewish merchant families.

Academic Positions

  • Fall 2016-present: Associate Professor of History and Joseph and Oro Halegua professor of Greek and Sephardic Jewish Studies; appointed to Graduate Center doctoral faculty
  • Fall 2009-Summer 2016: Assistant Professor of History and Joseph and Oro Halegua professor of Greek and Sephardic Jewish Studies
  • Fall 2007-Summer 2009: Junior Research Fellow, Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and the Oriental Institute of the University of Oxford (UK)

Selected Fellowships and Awards

  • 2014 National Jewish Book Award Finalist, in the categories of Sephardic Culture and Writing based on Archival Material
  • Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Fellowship Program, University of Pennsylvania, 2013-2014
  • PSC-CUNY 43 Research Award (2012-2013)
  • CUNY Faculty Fellowship Publication Program, Spring 2011
  • PSC-CUNY 41 Research Award (2010-2011)
  • Summer Research Workshop “Sephardic Jewry and the Holocaust”, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, June 2010
  • Doctoral Fellowship, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, 2006-2007
  • Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Fellowship Program, University of Pennsylvania, 2005-2006
  • Bernard Manekin Fellowship in the History of Jewish Art, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2000-2001
  • Fondazione Primo Levi (Florence) Award for an outstanding Laurea thesis in Jewish studies, 1999