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About the Jewish Studies Seminar
Since its inception in 2001, the Duke-UNC Seminar on Jewish Studies has gained a reputation as one of the more acclaimed intellectual meeting grounds in the area, continue reading..
Upcoming meeting Nov. 22 with Prof. Steven Aschheim
Upcoming meeting: November 22, 2009 with Steven Aschheim, Professor of History and the Vigevani Chair in European Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He will present “Bildung in Palestine: Zionism, Bi-Nationalism and the Strains of German-Jewish Humanism.”
paper available JSS-Aschheim
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Next seminar Nov. 15 with Prof. Miri Rubin
Next meeting: November 15, 2009 with Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History, Queen Mary College – University of London, “ecclesia and synagoga: Visual Dynamics and Historical Change”
powerpoint available
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meeting Nov. 11 with Sylvie Anne Goldberg
November 11, 2009 with Sylvie Anne Goldberg, Professor (Directrice d’études) at École des Hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris, “Questions of Times: Conflicting Time Scales in Historical Perspective”
paper available JSS-Goldberg
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Meeting Oct. 27 with Susannah Heschel
October 27, 2009 with Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College, “Intrigued with Islam: Jewish Scholars, Travelers, and Converts in Modern Europe”
paper available JSS-Heschel
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Next meeting: Oct. 4, 2009 with Prof. Amos Morris-Reich
Next meeting: October 4, 2009 with Prof. Amos Morris-Reich, University of Haifa, “Living in Two Dimensions: A Cultural History of ‘Territory’ (shetach) in Israeli Culture”
Morris-Reich: Living in Two Dimensions: A Cultural History of ‘Territory’ in Israeli Culture
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Lilian R. Furst, 1931-2009
It is with great sadness that we write to impart the news of the passing away, this past Friday night, of our beloved colleague Lilian Furst. From the very beginning of the Jewish Studies Seminar, Lilian graced our events with her presence, her astute remarks and first-hand knowledge of modern Jewish history and culture making an unparalleled contribution to our discussions. Last year, Lilian participated with Saul Friedlander and Albrecht Strauss in a commemorating Kristallnacht in the Freeman Center for Jewish Life at Duke, and provided a testimony to the impact of the events on the six-year-old child, her family and the Jewish community of Vienna.
Just over a month after Kristallnacht, Lilian and her family fled Austria to England (via Belgium). She received her doctorate from Cambridge and, since 1971, taught in major U.S. universities, ending as the Marcel Bataillon Professor of Comparative Literature at UNC – Chapel Hill. She published widely on nineteenth-century European literature – romanticism, realism and naturalism – and, most recently, on literature and medicine and post-Holocaust writing. Her best known work is, perhaps, Home is Somewhere Else: Autobiography in Two Voices (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), the life-story of her family, told through her own recollections and her father’s memoirs. The autobiography, and her work in general, give delicate but compelling testimony to the social and intellectual world of the Jewish émigrés and their travails, their constant struggle to comprehend, and adjust to different cultures and overcome unsympathetic bureaucracies, political or medical. Her departure marks the passing away of a whole world, which many of us, late comers, were privileged to get to know through her.
Those interested in her biography may wish to consult a brief interview she gave in 1996: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ideasv42/furst4.htm
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Next Meeting: October 4, 2009 with Prof. Amos Morris-Reich
Next meeting: October 4, 2009 with Prof. Amos Morris-Reich, University of Haifa, “Living in Two Dimensions: A Cultural History of ‘Territory’ (shetach) in Israeli Culture”
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Next meeting: April 19 with Dr. Motti Inbari, Brandeis University, “Religious Zionism and the Temple Mount Dilemma – Key Trends”
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Next Seminar: March 1 at 3PM, Freeman Center for Jewish Life at Duke University Dr. Thomas Meyer, “How to Write the History of Weimar Jewish Intellectuals? Two Studies about Julius Guttman, Leo Strauss, and Alexander Altmann”
Papers available for the seminar:
jss-meyer-altmann_jewish-theology
jss-meyer-julius-guttmann-leo-strauss-and-political-theology
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