Congratulations to Dr. Roni Cohen

JEWTACT fellow of 2021-2022, Dr. Roni Cohen, was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue his research project titled “In Search of the Early Modern Earworm: An Examination of Incidentally Copied Literary Pieces in the Margins of 15th-16th Century Jewish Manuscripts”. The project explores a previously undiscussed written corpus that is nevertheless oral in nature: short literary pieces—ranging from liturgic poems to fables, riddles, and even dirty rhyming jokes—that appear in early modern Jewish manuscripts. The project aims to shed a light on a repertoire of popular pieces that were preserved by scribes almost by mistake, texts that were written matter-of-factly – almost thoughtlessly - to test the ink, to practice form, or just for the pleasure of forming the words.