@article{mell_2023, title={Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth}, volume={56}, ISSN={["1569-1616"]}, DOI={10.1017/S0008938923000717}, abstractNote={The most horrific examples of antisemitism from medieval and early modern Europe are fic-titious tales, which describe Jews ritually murdering Christian boys in imitation of the cru-cifixion, consuming Christian blood in Passover matzas, desecrating the Eucharistic host, and spreading the plague by poisoning the water supply – the last being an “ honor ” they shared with lepers. These myths are imbricated with particular aspects of high medieval Western Christianity: an emphasis on the suffering Christ and his humanity, religious piety via imi-tatio Christi , the theological doctrine of transubstantiation, and, most importantly, an assumption of Jewish hatred for Christ (and Christians) so vehement that it welled up in psychotic reenactments of the Passion. It hardly needs to be said that these myths only make sense within a framework of Christian belief. For Jews, the Eucharistic host was just a cracker. Why would one stab a Ritz cracker with evil glee? Jews died of the Black Death just like Christians. Would they have poisoned the wells they used themselves? From a Jewish perspective, Jesus was just a man. So why reenact the Romans ’ crucifixion of a common criminal over 1000 years ago?! And most of all, would any sane person murder innocent children! These grotesque libels against medieval, early modern, and even modern Jews only began to be studied as a form of antisemitism in the 1960s, as Holocaust Studies developed. Following the pathbreaking work of Gavin Langmuir, scholars have established the chronology of these tales, probed the cultural contexts for their spread, and plumbed the theoretical distinctions between anti-Judaism and antisemitism. Magda Teter ’ s Blood Libel:}, number={3}, journal={CENTRAL EUROPEAN HISTORY}, author={Mell, Julie}, year={2023}, month={Sep}, pages={462–463} }
 @article{mell_2022, title={The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society}, ISSN={["1477-4534"]}, DOI={10.1093/ehr/ceac029}, abstractNote={The medieval bill of exchange and marine insurance are widely regarded by historians as financial instruments central to the long-distance trade that fuelled the commercial revolution of pre-modern Europe. Marine insurance was rooted in partnership contracts (commenda, societas maris), which, by splitting risk, mitigated loss due to storms, pirates and war. The bill of exchange, by which a merchant promised to repay a loan in another currency and place, combined the promissory note with currency exchange. Some early modern authors attributed the invention of these financial instruments to medieval Jews who, these authors supposed, used them to secrete wealth out of lands from which Jews had been expelled. Intrigued by the legend of Jewish origins, Francesca Trivellato (an Italian historian known for her work on Jews and cross-cultural trade in the early modern period) sets out to find when, where and why this ‘legend’ emerged. The book is the intellectual history of this legend. Trivellato traces the legend of Jewish origins back to the seventeenth-century genre of mercantile law books, in particular to Étienne Cleriac’s widely used Us et coustumes de la mer (1647), Jacques Savary’s ‘commercial manifesto’ Le parfait négociant (1675), and Savary’s sons’ bestselling Dictionnaire universel de commerce (1723–30). In the mid-eighteenth century, Montesquieu incorporated it into his De l’esprit des lois. With Montesquieu, the legend leapt from the backwaters of mercantile law to the mainstream of political theory. And as the reach of the legend expanded, the image of its Jewish inventors underwent significant change. Cleriac’s version of the legend was rooted in rank medieval stereotypes of Jewish usurers, while the Savarys stripped away these negative connotations. But in Montesquieu’s hands, the Jews became economic liberators—the obverse of usurers. The Jewish bill of exchange was not a species of nefarious usury, but a means of liberation from the economic stagnation of medieval Catholic doctrine. With this invention, ‘Jews introduced new dynamism into Europe’s economy and became harbringers of modernity’ (p. 134). However, Montesquieu’s positive vision of Jews as a modernising commercial force was reversed with the French Revolution.}, journal={ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW}, author={Mell, Julie}, year={2022}, month={Feb} }
 @article{mell_2014, title={Capitalism and the Jews}, volume={90}, ISSN={["1475-4932"]}, DOI={10.1111/1475-4932.12161}, abstractNote={Economic RecordVolume 90, Issue 291 p. 559-561 Review Capitalism and the Jews, by Jerry Z. Muller (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2010), pp. 267. Julie Mell, Julie Mell North Carolina State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Julie Mell, Julie Mell North Carolina State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 15 December 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4932.12161Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume90, Issue291December 2014Pages 559-561 RelatedInformation}, number={291}, journal={ECONOMIC RECORD}, author={Mell, Julie}, year={2014}, month={Dec}, pages={559–561} }
 @article{mell_2014, title={Cultural Meanings of Money in Medieval Ashkenaz: On Gift, Profit, and Value in Medieval Judaism and Christianity}, volume={28}, ISSN={["1572-8579"]}, DOI={10.1007/s10835-014-9212-3}, number={2}, journal={JEWISH HISTORY}, author={Mell, Julie L.}, year={2014}, month={Jun}, pages={125–158} }
 @article{mell_2012, title={Twentieth-Century Jewish Emigres and Medieval European Economic History}, volume={3}, ISSN={["2077-1444"]}, DOI={10.3390/rel3030556}, abstractNote={This essay discusses the intellectual contributions of five Jewish emigres to the study of European economic history. In the midst of the war years, these intellectuals reconceptualized premodern European economic history and established the predominant postwar paradigms. The emigres form three distinct groups defined by Jewish identity and by professional identity. The first two (Guido Kisch and Toni Oelsner) identified as Jews and worked as Jewish historians. The second two (Michal Postan and Robert Lopez) identified as Jews, but worked as European historians. The last (Karl Polanyi) was Jewish only by origin, identified as a Christian socialist, and worked first as an economic journalist, then in worker's education and late in life as a professor of economics. All five dealt with the origin of European capitalism, but in different veins: Kisch celebrated and Oelsner contested a hegemonic academic discourse that linked the birth of capitalism to Jews. Postan and Lopez contested the flip-side of this discourse, the presumption that medieval Europe was pre-capitalist par excellence. In doing so, they helped construct the current paradigm of a high medieval commercial revolution. Polanyi contested historical narratives that described the Free Market as the natural growth of economic life. This essay explores the grounding of these paradigms in the shared crucible of war and exile as Jewish emigres. This shared context helps illuminate the significance of their intellectual contributions by uncovering the webs of meaning in which their work was suspended.}, number={3}, journal={RELIGIONS}, author={Mell, Julie}, year={2012}, month={Sep}, pages={556–587} }