The Converso/Crypto-Jewish Atlantic Now: New Questions About Return, Religion, and Nation

• In Event: New Crossroads in Iberian and Jewish Studies I: Re-encounters, Returns, and Recoveries in the Iberian Peninsula and the Atlantic World

Abstract

Descendants of Iberian conversos and crypto-Jews in the Americas have been visible in the media, literature, and scholarship since the late twentieth century. Based on oral historical research on Sephardi citizenship laws in Iberia and the analysis of contemporary transatlantic cultural discourses and fiction about historical conversions, this paper explores questions about religion and nation across the Atlantic, with implications for both Jewish Studies and Iberian Studies: In what ways do converso descendants in the Americas who apply for Spanish or Portuguese citizenship expand the boundaries of Iberian and Sephardi identity definitions? What are the motivations and interests in the Americas compelling converso-descendants' "returns" to a Sephardi past? How does a contemporary "Atlantic" framing of contemporary converso descent further our understanding of the import of historical identities and genealogical consciousness today?

Author

• DALIA KANDIYOTI, College of Staten Island, CUNY