From Debdou's Little Seville to America's Guess: Rural Artisans and Global Designers - Aomar Boum

In this talk, Prof. Boum will develop the concept of aesthetic funds of knowledge to name the embodied, socially transmitted, and commercially usable repertoires through which Sephardic Moroccan Jews built aesthetic and sartorial competence across Debdou, France, and the Americas. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic and archival research in the Moroccan Jewish community in Los Angeles and building on Luis Moll’s account of the relation among household, community, and education, he examines how the Marcianos and other LA- and Montreal-based Moroccan Jews, whose family history links rural Moroccan Jewish life to transnational fashion commerce, negotiated Sephardic cultural identity and economic participation through work with dress, shoes, and bags. Family networks, business partnerships, and community organizations enabled Marciano scribes, weavers, cobblers, artisans, and entrepreneurs to convert clothing knowledge and aesthetic judgment into reputational capital, niche positioning, and durable commercial ties. Their careers show how Sephardic distinction in the garment and fashion sectors grew from inherited craft knowledge, kin-based trust, and the practical calibration of taste across Mediterranean and Atlantic commercial worlds.
Wednesday, November 4, 2026 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM
From Debdou’s Little Seville to America’s Guess: Rural Artisans and Global Designers
Aomar Boum (UCLA)
Moderated by Sarah Stein (UCLA)
Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies