A wide range of commentators have talked about music as something that has historically transcended the boundary between Muslims and Jews in North Africa. This talk will explore and complicate this notion by asking what it means to speak of a boundary when talking about Muslim-Jewish musical relationships in Algeria since the middle of the nineteenth century. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, musical examples, and social science theory, I will suggest that the boundary is a rich metaphor that can be read in multiple ways, each of which draws attention to distinct facets of Muslim-Jewish intimacy in Algeria and its diaspora, in music and beyond.

Biography

Jonathan Glasser is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at William & Mary, a university located in Williamsburg, Virginia founded in 1693. He is the author of The Lost Paradise: Andalusi Music in Urban North Africa, published by University of Chicago Press in 2016, and his research articles have appeared in American Ethnologist, Anthropological Quarterly, and The International Journal of Middle East Studies. During 2019-2020, he was a resident fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Paris, where he was working on his current book project about Muslim-Jewish musical intimacy in Algeria and its diaspora.