Raíces: Revista Judía de Cultura: UNC Libraries acquires materials for faculty, students and other Jewish studies scholars
By Tara O’Donnell, graduate student assistant
Raíces: Revista Judía de Cultura numbers among the most exciting recent acquisitions in the university library. Circulating since 1986, this quarterly periodical chronicles Jewish cultural life in contemporary Spain and the Hispanic Jewish world. The journal engages an extensive Spanish-speaking readership with materials spanning medieval Iberia, the Spanish Civil War, and beyond.
Raíces has bicoastal representation at both Stanford University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, though Carolina is the only United States repository to have comprehensively cataloged its volumes. As the journal is indexed in multiple databases (including the Modern Language Association and Proquest), this acquisition can be digitally accessed by both UNC affiliates and the global academic community.
Raíces’ presence in Chapel Hill will facilitate invaluable cultural conversations and promote cross-disciplinary engagement with the Hispanic Jewish experience. Raíces found its home at UNC through the collaborative effort of Dr. Teresa Chapa, librarian of Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Studies, and Dr. Adam Cohn, the JMA and Sonja van der Horst Fellow in Jewish Studies and assistant professor of Spanish in the department of romance studies. Acquisition discussions began in 2024 not long after Dr. Cohn’s appointment. “When we have someone new on campus, they open up a whole new world for us,” Dr. Chapa remarked. The collection was acquired in Madrid, encompassing 97 editions of the journal for UNC access. The 2024 edition, currently on order, will round out the remainder of Raíces available for institutional purchase.
Dr. Cohn first interacted with Raíces as a PhD student, consulting the journal for Abraham Shalom Yahuda’s letters. Access to the collection critically informed Cohn’s dissertation project (and now book manuscript), clarifying Yahuda’s experience as the first professor of Jewish studies in Spain. Cohn will engage students with Raíces materials as they produce podcasts for SPAN/JWST 364: Multiethnic Cultures of Contemporary Spain. This acquisition more tangibly bridges students and researchers to Spanish Jewish cultural life, its expansive content paving countless avenues of creative interrogation.
If you are interested in viewing Raíces on campus or through interlibrary loan, it can be requested via the University Libraries.