“Italian Jews in Context: Relations, Exchanges, Networks” features new research on early modern and modern Italian Jewish life in relation to and in dialogue with the larger context of Mediterranean, European, and American Jewish history. This conference seeks to move beyond the dichotomy of “exceptionality” and “representativeness” engrained in much of the historiography on Italian Jewry, which views this minority either as an extraordinary case apart from the better known Sephardi and Ashkenazi examples or as a model of general Jewish history on a small scale. The panelists will situate the Italian Jewish experience within a trans-regional and trans-national context that is mindful of the complex, and at times conflicting, set of networks, relations, and loyalties, which characterized diasporic life from the 16th to the 20th century.