EVENTS

The Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies
University of Massachusetts Amherst

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previous guest lecturers and events :

Spring 2012

"Education after Auschwitz:

Levinas, Humanism, and the Promise of Jewish Education”

 Claire Katz

Professor of Philosophy and Women's and Gender Studies

Texas A&M University

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 - Herter Hall Room 301

"The Binding of Abraham:

Revisiting Mt. Moriah with Rembrandt and Kierkegaard”

 Daniel Conway

Professor of Philosophy and Humanities

Texas A&M University

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 - Herter Hall Room 301

"Will Eisner's Graphic Novels and Secular Jewish Life in New York"

N.C. Christopher Couch

Comparative Literature and Judaic and Near Eastern Studies

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Thursday, March 1st, 2012 - SOM Room 133

"The Legacy of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: A Family Perspective"

filmmaker Ivy Meeropol and author Michael Meeropol

Monday, March 5th, 2012 - Thompson Hall Room 106

"Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist"

Film Introduced by Denis Kitchen

Award-winning cartoonist and founder of Kitchen Sink Press

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 - Herter Hall Room 227

"Is Superman (Still) Jewish?  Superheroes as Secular Saviors"

Danny Fingeroth

Comics industry veteran and author of

Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics and the Creation of the Superhero

Thursday, April 5th, 2012 - Herter Hall Room 231

Julius Menn, Holocaust Survivor

Monday, April 16th, 2012 - Hillel House

Special Screening of "The Cantor's Son"

with introduction by Dr. Rachel Rubinstein

Associate Professor of American Literature and

Jewish Studies at Hampshire College

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 - SOM Room 137

Department End-of-Year Reception

Wednesday, May 2nd - 7th Floor Lobby, Herter Hall

"Carbon Democracy:  Political Power in the Age of Oil"

Timothy Mitchell

Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and

African Studies, Columbia University

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012, 3:30PM - Cape Cod Lounge, Campus Center

Fall 2011

“The Roots and Development of the Israeli Song: 

from the Pre-state Stage to the Present”

 Dani Orstav

Producer and host of the classical music

programs of The Voice of Israel

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 - Herter Hall Room 301

previous academic years' guest lectures and events:

Spring 2011

“Russian-Israeli Art”

 David Stromberg

Jerusalem-based writer and translator

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 - Herter Hall Room 205

“ Holocaust Legacy: Empty Spaces, Fading First-Hand Memories, Bold New Jewish Realities ”

 Ruth Ellen Gruber

Haddasah Brandeis Institute Scholar-In-Residence

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 - Herter Hall Room 601

"A Film Unfinished” - Screenings and Director's Reception

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

 Film Screening at 4:00 PM

Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies

Reception with Director:  6:00 PM

Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies

Film Screening at 7:30 PM

Flavin Auditorium, School of Management Building

"AN EVENING WITH IRWIN HASEN"

Wednesday, March 30th,2011 Thompson Hall, Room 106

"IRWIN:  A NEW YORK STORY"

Documentary Film screening by Director Dan Makara

Thursday, March 31st - Herter Hall, Room 301

“Language and Identity Formation in the Middle East:

The Case of Arabic”

Franck Salameh

Tuesday, April 5th - Herter Hall, Room 301

“ Hanucomikahs:  A talk mostly about being a cartoonist and some about being a Jew ”

Hilary Price

Thursday, April 7th - Boyden Gym, Room 249

"The Arts of Counter-Memory"

Horst Hoheisel

Thursday, April 14th - Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies

"A Conversation with Alissa Rosenberg Torres"

Creator of the 9/11 graphic novel

An American Widow

Thursday, April 21st - Herter Hall, Room 301

"The Holocaust in Translation: Ruth Franklin and Peter Filkins Discuss H.G. Adler, Holocaust Literature and Memory"

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 - Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies

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Fall 2010

“Flavius Josephus:

the Man and His Contribution to History”

 Dr. Mireille Hadas-Lebel

Professor of Ancient History & Religious Studies at the Sorbonne

 Tuesday, November 30th - Herter Hall Room 601

“Arab/Jew/Arab Jew: Sephardi youth

and the racialization of Jewishness in France”

Dr. Kimberly Arkin

Department of Anthropology, Boston University 

Wednesday, December 8th - Herter Hall Room 301

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Spring 2010

 "Will Eisner's Ideals:

A Panel Discussion on Comics & Society"

with Howard Cruse, Gary Hallgren and Sophia Wiedeman

Tuesday , March 2nd, 4:00 PM - Herter Hall Room 227

Artist-in-Residence Program - Caryl Phillips

April 5th-9th 2010

"Jewish Women Writers in France:

A Sephardic Perspective"

Nina Lichtenstein

Tuesday, April 20th, 4:00 PM - Herter Hall Room 601

"Islam, Secularism & the State Symposium"

Iza Hussin, Banu Subramaniam, Rahsann Maxwell

Wednesday, April 21st, 3:30 PM

Herter Hall Room 301

Film Screening of American Splendor

Film introduced by N. C. Christopher Couch

Tuesday, April 27th, 6:30PM

SOM 137 (Flavin Auditorium)

"The Sexual Transformation of Ashkenaz"

Naomi Seidman

Wednesday, April 28th, 5:00 PM

Herter Hall Room 301

"A Conversation with Harvey Pekar about

'The Jewish Graphic Novel'"

Naomi Seidman and Harvey Pekar

Thursday, April 29th, 5:00 PM

SOM 137 (Flavin Auditorium)

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Fall 2009

Suleiman Mourad - Thursday, October 15th, 4:00PM

Bartlett Hall, Room 316

David Biale - Wednesday, October 21st, 4:00PM

Herter Hall, Room 301

Daniel Boyarin - Monday, November 2nd, 3:30PM

Herter Hall, Room 301

Tamar Mayer - Thursday, November 5th, 4:00PM

Herter Hall, Room 301

Donald Weber - Wednesday, November 12th, 4:00PM

Herter Hall, Room 601

 Udi Aloni - Wednesday, November 18th, 7:00PM

Herter Hall, Room 601

Willi Goetschel - Thursday, November 19th, 11:30AM

Brown-Bag luncheon with Judaic/German students

Herter Hall, Room 601

Willi Goetschel - Thursday, November 19th, 4:00PM

Herter Hall, Room 601

Jacquelyn Southern - Wednesday, December 2nd, 4:30PM

Herter Hall, Room 601

Psoy Korolenko - Thursday, December 3rd, 7:00PM

at the National Yiddish Book Center

(on the campus of Hampshire College)

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The Robert and Pamela Jacobs
Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Life & Culture:

Yehuda Bauer

Holocaust / Genocide / Today

Monday, April 27, 2009 at 4:30PM in Memorial Hall

Daniel Libeskind
Breaking Ground
Tuesday, May 9, 2006 at 4:30PM in Bowker Auditorium

Naomi Chazan
Israeli Peace Options: Thinking Outside the Box
Tuesday, April 27, 2004 at 4:00PM in Memorial Hall

Dennis Ross (Ambassador)
Missing Peace in the Middle East
Wednesday, May 7, 2003 at 4:30PM in Bowker Auditorium

Other Department Lectures and Visitors

October 18, 2007
The Felix Posen Distinguished Lecture in Secular Judaism Fall 2007
Alanna Cooper, Cultural Anthropologist
Culture, Diaspora, Gender: Whither Jewish Studies

April 5, 2007
Rebecca Stein, Duke University
Tourism, Israeli Identity, and Cultural Terms of the Oslo Process

March 13, 2007
Idith Zertal, University of Basel, Switzerland
Israel's Memory of the Holocaust and the Israeli-Arab Conflict

February 15, 2007
Larissa Remennick, Bar-Ilan University
The Gender Perspective in Immigration Research: The Case of Former Soviet Jews in Israel and in the West

February 6, 2007
Adolfo Roitman, Israel Museum, Jerusalem and Schecter Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem
From Biblical Land to Secular Country

November 13, 2006
John Davis, University of Connecticut
The Jews of San Nicandro: An unlikely tale of collective conversion in 20th century Italy

November 7, 2006
Dorit Naam, Queen's University, Canada
DiaDocuMEntary

November 2, 2006
James E. Young, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Out of Egypt by Andre Aciman (book discussion)

September 12, 2006
Chaim Cohen, Ben Gurion University, Israel
The Ancient Critical Misunderstanding of Exodus 21:22-25 and Its Implications for the Current Debate on Abortion

May 3, 2006
The Felix Posen Distinguished Lecture in Secular Judaism Spring 2006
at 5:00PM, in 601 Herter Hall, UMass
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi (Duke University) and Bernard Avishai (Duke University)
Jerusalem, Politics, and Poetry

April 18, 2006
Matthew Bogdanos (Author)
Thieves of Baghdad: The Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stole Treasure

April 4, 2006
Jay Berkovitz (Judaic Studies), Tayeb El-Hibri (Middle Eastern Studies) and David Mednicoff (Legal Studies)
Recent developments in Israel and Palestine

March 7, 2006
Jay Berkovitz (UMass Amherst) and Alanna Cooper (UMass Amherst)
The Forgotten Refugees, film screening and discussion

February 2, 2006
Adolofo Roitman (Scholar and Curator of the Dead Sea Scroll Collection at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and senior lecturer at Schecter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
The Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls For Judaism and Christianity

October 19, 2005
Esther Dischereit (Poet, novelist, essayist, stage and radio dramatist)
reading and discussion of her recent work

September 21, 2005
Murray Baumgarten (University of California, Santa Cruz)
American Midrash: Urban Jewish Writing and the Reclaiming of Judaism

April 19, 2005
Julian Weiss (King's College in London)
The Clerics and the Jews: Narratives of Tolerance and Persecution in Thirteenth-Century Spain

February 16, 2005
Menachem Wiesenberg (Jerusalem Academy of Music)
A Composer’s Responsibility to a Society in a Pressure Cooker

February 10, 2005 The Felix Posen Distinguished Lecture in Secular Judaism Spring 2005
Rachel Elior (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Judaism and Democracy

November 17, 2004
Wolfgang Kohlhaase (Screenwriter)
The Naked Man on the Athletic Field

November 15, 2004
Wolfgang Kohlhaase (Screenwriter)
The Gleiwitz Case

November 15, 2004
Renata Stih and Frieder Schnocl (Artists)
Public Art and Social Sculpture

November 9, 2004
Avaraham Burg (Former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and Geneva Accord Negotiator)
Struggling Towards Peace in Time of Terror

November 7, 2004
Daniel Goldhagen (Harvard University)
What is New About the New Anti-Semitism?

November 1, 2004
Marcie Herschman (Tufts University)
What is a Jewish American Writer?

October 26, 2004
Hanno Loewy (University of Konstanz, Germany)
Shadows and Innocence: Bela Balazs Methaphoric Childhood after the War and the Holocaust

October 21, 2004
The Felix Posen Distinguished Lecture in Secular Judaism Fall 2004
David Biale (University of California Davis)
God’s Language and the Making of Secular Jewish Culture

May 3, 2004
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg (University of London)
Seduced into Eden: the Beginning of Desire

April 27, 2004 The Robert and Pamela Jacobs Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Life & Culture
Naomi Chazan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Israeli Peace Options: Thinking Outside the Box

March 25, 2004
Jyl Lynn Felman (UMass)
The Death of Metaphor in Jewish Women’s Writing

March 30, 2004
Elizabeth Castelli (Columbia University)
Christian Commemorations of Suffering: Ancient and Modern Debates over Spectacles of Violence

March 23, 2004
Kenneth Stowe (Haifa University)
The Bread, the Children, and the Dogs: Continuity in the Jewish-Catholic Relationship

March 10, 2004
Olga Gershenson (Bridgewater State College)
Gesher: Russian Theatre in Israel; the Rhetoric of Cultural Colonization

March 9, 2004
Marjorie Agosin (Author and Poet)
The Angel of Memory/El Angel De La Memoria

November 13, 2003
Laura Levitt (Temple University)
Peering Out from under a Long Shadow: Remembering Ordinary Jewish Loss

November 10, 2003
Daniel Boyarin (University of California)
Thinking Hybridity in Language: The Semantics of Orthodoxy

November 4, 2003
Chaim Cohen (Ben Gurion University)
The New Yehoash Inscription in Biblical Hebrew: Fact or Fiction?

October 23, 2003
Alanna Cooper (UMass)
“If we are not Sephardi Jews then who are we?” Diaspora, Reunion and Bukharan Jewish Identity

May 7, 2003 The Robert and Pamela Jacobs Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Life & Culture
Dennis Ross (Ambassador)
Missing Peace in the Middle East

April 23, 2003
Horst Hoheisel (Renowned German Artist)
The Art of the Counter-monument

April 15, 2003
Mario Kessler (Center for Contemporary Historical Research in Potsdam, Germany)
Zionism and the International Labor Movement

April 14, 2003
Hanno Loewy (University of Konstanz in Germany)
The Mother of All Holocaust Films? Wanda Jakubowska' Auschwitz-Trilogy
Lecture followed by a screening of Jakubowska's The Last Stage

December 11, 2002
Tal Ilan (Harvard University)
Cooks/Poisoners, Healers/Killers, Religion/Witchcraft: Jewish Women's Religion in Greco-Roman Antiquity

November 19, 2002
Ruth Ellen Gruber (Author and Journalist)
Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe

November 13, 2002
John Felstiner (Stanford University)
"Still Songs to Sing": Holocaust Art, Music, and the Translating of Poetry

November 7, 2002
Laurence Thomas (Syracuse University)
Blacks and Jews: The Question of Group Autonomy and Narrative Identity

October 2, 2002
Hanno Loewy (University of Konstanz)
Survivor as Villain: Auschwitz Fantasies and Revenge in Popular Films

September 24, 2002
Frank Stern (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Vienna as the Cradle of Jewish Film: Freud meets Lot's Wife and Moses Crosses the Danube

May 7, 2002
Catherine Portuges (UMass)
Jewish Assimilation & European Identity in Szabo's film "Sunshine"

May 7, 2002
Larry Goldbaum (Office of Jewish Affairs, UMass)
The Challenges of Inter-Ethnic Collaboration at UMass

April 23, 2002
James E. Young (UMass)
Looking into the Mirrors of Evil: Reflections on the Recent Jewish Museum Exhibition

April 18, 2002
Philip Graubart (National Yiddish Book Center)
Trends in Contemporary Jewish Narrative

April 11, 2002
Deborah Lipstadt (Author)
Holocaust on Trial

April 9, 2002
Susan Shapiro (UMass)
Gender and Judaism

March 14, 2002
Maurianne Adams (UMass) and John Bracey (UMass)
Neighbors and Strangers: African-Americans and Jews

March 7, 2002
Anita Diamant (Author)
Writing Women's Lives

February 28, 2002
Federick Busi (UMass)
Gougenot des Mousseaux and his Impact on French and German Antisemitism

February 21, 2002
Emanuel Rubin (UMass)
Music in Israel Today: National, Ethnic, and Religious Forms

February 14, 2002
Jay R. Berkovitz (UMass) and Tayeb El-Hibri (UMass)
The Role of Religion in the Middle East Conflict

December 5, 2001
Candelario Saenz
The Secret Jews of Spain, Portugal, and the U.S.

December 4, 2001
Ralph Melnick (Williston Academy)
Doing Jewish Biography

November 29, 2001
Julius Lester (UMass)
Ashkenazi/Non-Jewish Latino Relations in the U.S.

November 8, 2001
Harley Erdman (UMass)
Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Cuba

October 18, 2001
Ilan Stavans (Amherst College)
Ashkenazi/Sephardi and Non-Jewish Latino Relations in Mexico

October 15, 2001
Peter Stansky (Stanford University)
The Sassoons and John Singer Sargent: An Anglo-Jewish Collection?

May 10, 2001
Arnold Dashefsky (UConn)
Where is American Jewry Headed? A Sociological Analysis

May 1, 2001
Larry Goldbaum (UMass)
The Challenges of Inter-Ethnic Collaboration at UMass

April 24, 2001
Robert Rothstein (UMass)
Speaking Jewish: Jewish Languages and Jewish Identity

April 17, 2001
Judith Plaskow (Manhattan College)
Judaism and the Feminist Challenge

April 13, 2001
Eugene Pogany (B.U. School of Medicine)
A Lot to Think About: Jewish/Christian Relations; Family Relationships; the Holocaust

April 3, 2001
Aviva Ben-Ur (UMass)
The Jews of Suriname: Sephardic-Ashkenazic Rift

April 3, 2001
Linda Gradstein (NPR)
Israel Currently

March 27, 2001
James Young (UMass)
The Holocaust, Memory and Jewish Identity

March 7, 2001
Margalit Matitiahu (Bar-Ilan University)
Ladino Poetry and Writing after Auschwitz

February 27, 2001
Kenneth Stow (Haifa University)
The Church, the Pope, and the Holocaust

February 13, 2001
Daniel Sinclair (Law School of the College of Management)
Separating Conjoined Twins: Jewish Bio-Ethical Perspectives

November 14, 2000
Sandy Warren (Solomon Schechter Day School)
A Jewish Day School Grows in Northampton

October 24, 2000
Jay R. Berkovitz (UMass)
Teaching Jewish History: Toward What Educational Aims?

October 11, 2000
Rona Sheramy (Bard College)
Defining Lessons: The Holocaust in American Jewish Education, 1945 to Present