2015-16 Events

The Joyce Z. Greenberg Visiting Professorship Lectures

• January 28, 2016, Edwin Seroussi, professor of musicology and director of the Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “Jews Becoming Modern: The Musical Track.”
• May 17, 2016, Israel Gershoni, professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, “Demon and Infidel: Egyptian Intellectuals Confronting Hitler and Nazism During the Second World War 1939­–1945.”

The Jean and Harold Gossett Lecture in Memory of Holocaust Victims Martha and Paul Feivel Korngold

• May 3, 2016, David Shneer, the Louis P. Singer Professor of Jewish History and professor of history, religious studies and Jewish studies at the University of Colorado – Boulder, “Grief: The History of the World’s First Holocaust Liberation Photograph and the Man Who Made It.”

October 14–15, 2015. “Etgar Keret’s Summer Camp.” A two-day conference at the University of Chicago, co-sponsored by the Heksherim Institute for Israeli Literature and Culture at Ben Gurion University in the Negev and the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago. The conference included academic panels with lectures by specialists from Israel, the US and Asia, as well as a public interview with Keret, a roundtable conversation with Keret and a group of prominent novelists and translators, and a screening of one of Keret’s films. Co-Chairs: Yigal Schwartz (Ben Gurion University) and Na’ama Rokem (University of Chicago)

October 18–19, 2015. “Martin Buber: Philosopher of Dialogue.” In commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Buber’s death, this two-day conference brought together leading scholars from around the country who together generated new questions and reflections at the heart of Buber’s thought.

October 22–23, 2015. “Xenophobia and Alterophobia in Pre-Modern Ottoman Lands.” Organized by Hakan Karateke (University of Chicago), Helga Anetshofer (University of Chicago) and Erdem Çipa (University of Michigan). Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Division of the Humanities, the Humanities Visiting Committee, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Norman Wait Harris Memorial Fund, and the Center for International Studies.

November 2, 2015; January 25, 2016; April 13, 2016. "Messianism: The 2015–2016 Midwestern Inter-University Workshop in Jewish Studies." Organized by graduate students Erik Dreff (Divinity) and Sarah Zager (Divinity) with a grant from the American Academy for Jewish Research and funding from the Chicago Center for Jewish Studies, the University of Chicago Graduate Student Council, the Northwestern University Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, and Indiana University. Keynote speakers included Martin Kavka (Florida State University), Dana Hollander (McMaster University), and Kenneth Seeskin (Northwestern University).

January 12 – March 8, 2016. "Eyes Wide Open: Politics and Aesthetics in Contemporary Israeli Film." Film series presented by Doc Films and sponsored by the Chicago Center for Jewish Studies – Gemunder Family Fund with additional funding from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Newberger Hillel Center.

April 26, 2016. Screening of The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer with director Asaf Galay, moderated by  Sunny Yudkoff (Germanic Studies)