Jessica Roda is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. She is currently an assistant professor of Jewish Civilization in the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Her research interests include religion, performing arts, gender, international cultural politics, and transnationalism. She earned Ph.Ds from the Sorbonne and the University of Montreal respectively, during which she studied the political implications of Sephardic and Arab-Jewish music as well as the Unesco Convention of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003).
More recently, Dr. Roda began an ethnography of Orthodox Jewish female artistic life in North America. She is working on her second book ”Beyond the Sheitl: Jewish Orthodox Women and Performances in the Digital Age”, where she investigates how the artistic performances of ultra-orthodox women act as an agent of social, economic and cultural empowerment within the religious world and as a space challenging gender and religious identities in the context of decolonizing feminism.
This conversation with published author and anthropologist Dr. Jessica Roda was so informative. Jessica filled in so many gaps with her academic research.
Franciska and Jessica discussed everything from the “professionalism” and “lack of Modern Orthodox singers in the industry” to “how the market has evolved”. Tune in!