Professor Deeana Klepper, Department of Religion, Boston University “Abraham had two sons,” wrote St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians, “one by a slave woman and one by a free woman.” Paul associated the child of the slave woman, Hagar, with Jews living under the Law given at Sinai and the child of the […]
Professor Donna Freitas,Department of Religious Studies, St. Michael’s College, Vermont Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, published between 1996 and 2000, is emerging as a cultural classic. Though marketed to a young adult audience, this sweeping tale is filled with questions that captivate mature readers as well as the young. In short, this is a story for anyone […]
Professor Abigail Gillman Boston University Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures This lecture analyzes two newly established sites of Jewish memory in the heart of Vienna: The Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna, re-opened in 1993, and Rachel Whiteread’s “Nameless Library,” a monument to the 65,000 Austrian Jews murdered in the Holocaust, erected […]
Professor Susan Einbinder Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Princeton Institute for Advanced Study A seminar exploring several examples of medieval Hebrew poetry both as literary works and as historically anchored in time and place. Key to the discussion are questions as to how medieval Hebrew poems make meaning and how they reflect the divergent […]
Professor Susan Einbinder Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Princeton Institute for Advanced Study The late thirteenth-century poet, Isaac haGorni, entered twentieth-century scholarship as a braggart and bohemian, a wandering singer-poet who was described as a Hebrew counterpart to the famed troubadours of medieval Provence. This talk returns to haGorni, both in historical context and […]
Professor Meir Bar-Ilan, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Jewish Studies Dr. Bar-Ilan teaches courses on Talmud and Judaism in Antiquity. He has published extensively on magic, medicine, mysticism, astronomy, astrology, mathematics and numerology in the ancient Jewish world.
Dr. Ann Braude, Senior Lecturer on the History of Christianity, Harvard Divinity School Pundits on both the right and the left portray feminism and religion as opposing forces in American culture. “Rereading Religious Feminism” historicizes this interpretation of American history, analyzing both its sources and its implications. The lecture will explore the role of religion […]
Dr. Ann Braude, Senior Lecturer on the History of Christianity, Harvard Divinity School This seminar will explore gender and religious experience in nineteenth-century America through the lens of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. All participants should have read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Professor Braude’s article “Women’s History Is American Religious History” (in Retelling U.S. […]
Professor Del Kolve UCLA Department of English Del Kolve is an Emeritus faculty member of the Department of English at UCLA. His research interests include the work of Geoffrey Chaucer and the visual arts in the Middle Ages. He is the author of Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales and […]
Professor Diana Wylie Boston University Department of History Using text and images, Professor Wylie will mark the tenth anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic elections. She will base her observations on a biography she is currently writing about a South African artist, as well as on frequent research trips to that country.