Education:
A.M., Harvard University, Middle Eastern Studies
A.B., Harvard University (summa cum laude)
Biography:
Jessica Marglin’s research focuses broadly on the history of Jewish-Muslim relations in North Africa during the modern and early-modern periods. Her dissertation examines how Jews used the various legal institutions available to them in nineteenth-century Morocco, including Jewish courts, shari‘a courts, and foreign consular courts. It constitutes the first systematic study of Jews’ legal strategies in pre-colonial Morocco based on archival evidence in Arabic and Hebrew, as well as European languages. The dissertation argues that Jewish legal autonomy in the Islamic world must not be mistaken for legal isolation. On the contrary, Jews felt it was their right to engage the Moroccan legal system, and were comfortable using Islamic legal institutions on a day-to-day basis. This view challenges characterizations of Moroccan Jews as seeking to escape an inherently oppressive Islamic regime. The evidence shows instead that Jews used all the various venues available to them, making calculations of the relative advantages of each one. This view suggests that Jews did not make legal choices based an ideological beliefs in the merits of one or another legal system, which is how their legal history has often been described.
Jessica has made a number of contributions to the fields of North African history and the history of Jews in the Islamic Mediterranean. Her publications include a forthcoming article in The Jewish Quarterly Review, two articles in edited volumes, and entries in the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. She has been invited to present at conferences in the United States, France, Morocco, Italy, Turkey, and England, and at seminars in the United States, France, England, and the Netherlands. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Whiting Fellowship, a Wexner Graduate Fellowship, and a Fulbright Research Fellowship. She has been a graduate fellow at Princeton’s Center for the Study of Religion and at Yeshiva University’s Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization. Jessica graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and earned her master’s from Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. She has also studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the É cole des Hautes É tudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
