On Vanishing Archives: The Culture of North African Sephardim
Document Type
Event
Faculty Mentor
Justin Tussing
Abstract
My Graduate Research Fellowship examines the remaining traces of the Sephardic community in contemporary Tunisia to understand how they are productive for thinking about the status of a vanishing identity. While earning my MFA in Creative Writing, I am working on a novel about my father’s life growing up in Tunisia after World War II and before independence from France. Therefore, a primary objective of my study is to better grasp how fiction writers engage in the process of gathering archival information and synthesizing records and facts into a narrative. Conducting interviews with authors and scholars has broadened my knowledge of the complex historical and social space that constitutes the frame of my novel. Additionally, collecting archival data from numerous sources has aided my inquiry into the lives of Sephardic people living in Tunisia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries within the context of past political events. These investigations provided a foundation of knowledge when I traveled to Tunisia in December of 2025. Thanks to funding from the Graduate Research Fellowship, I was able to work with a local Tunisian guide who was knowledgeable about the past and present Sephardic communities in the country. During this fieldwork, I went to the historically Jewish neighborhoods where my father lived in Tunis, La Goulette, and Djerba to search for traces of Sephardic culture. In addition to visiting sites and learning from the docent, I had the invaluable experience of being a guest in the home of a Jewish Tunisian family. Immersion in the culture allowed me to learn about customs, food, language, and what it means to be part of a decreasing population in a country where a thriving community once existed. Bringing awareness to this vanishing community through interdisciplinary study draws strands to numerous contemporary discourses, including decolonization, immigration, identity, and creativity.
On Vanishing Archives: The Culture of North African Sephardim
My Graduate Research Fellowship examines the remaining traces of the Sephardic community in contemporary Tunisia to understand how they are productive for thinking about the status of a vanishing identity. While earning my MFA in Creative Writing, I am working on a novel about my father’s life growing up in Tunisia after World War II and before independence from France. Therefore, a primary objective of my study is to better grasp how fiction writers engage in the process of gathering archival information and synthesizing records and facts into a narrative. Conducting interviews with authors and scholars has broadened my knowledge of the complex historical and social space that constitutes the frame of my novel. Additionally, collecting archival data from numerous sources has aided my inquiry into the lives of Sephardic people living in Tunisia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries within the context of past political events. These investigations provided a foundation of knowledge when I traveled to Tunisia in December of 2025. Thanks to funding from the Graduate Research Fellowship, I was able to work with a local Tunisian guide who was knowledgeable about the past and present Sephardic communities in the country. During this fieldwork, I went to the historically Jewish neighborhoods where my father lived in Tunis, La Goulette, and Djerba to search for traces of Sephardic culture. In addition to visiting sites and learning from the docent, I had the invaluable experience of being a guest in the home of a Jewish Tunisian family. Immersion in the culture allowed me to learn about customs, food, language, and what it means to be part of a decreasing population in a country where a thriving community once existed. Bringing awareness to this vanishing community through interdisciplinary study draws strands to numerous contemporary discourses, including decolonization, immigration, identity, and creativity.
