On Tuesday, November 12, UConn Professor Emerita Nehama Aschkenasy will give a talk on "National Identity and Private Histories: The Fiction and Lives of Aharon Appelfeld and Amos Oz." The talk will be held at the UConn Stamford campus in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) from 7:00-8:00 pm. Attendance qualifies for honors credit.

The talk is free and open to the public. If you require an accommodation, please contact Stamford Coordinator for Judaic Studies Professor Fred Roden at frederick.roden@uconn.edu or 203-251-8559.

About the Talk

This lecture is a tribute to the two giants of Israeli literature, Aharon Appelfeld (1923-2018) and Amos Oz (1939-2018), demonstrating how their lives and fictions were shaped by and intertwined with the two momentous events in recent Jewish history: the Holocaust (in the case of Appelfeld) and the birth of the State of Israel (for Oz). Their stories reveal the cultural and socio-psychological spirit of contemporary Israel as it wrestles with its national, ethnic, and moral identity.

About the Speaker

Dr. Nehama Aschkenasy is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at UConn, where she taught courses in literature and religion. She is Founding Director Emerita of the former Center for Judaic and Middle Eastern Studies at UConn Stamford. Aschkenasy published four books, among them the award-winning Eve's Journey, and has contributed numerous chapters to books and journals. Her essay on the Bible's role in modern Israeli culture, "Recreating the Canon," is included in the Posen Library (Yale University Press). She has served as Associative Editor of several scholarly journals in the US and the UK.

On Tuesday, November 12, anthropologist and Senior Researcher of the Dangerous Speech Project (DSP) Cathy Buerger will present "Fear and Loathing in our Discourse: Dangerous Speech, Division, and What to Do about It." The talk will be held at the UConn Stamford campus in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) from 12:30-2:00 pm.  

The talk is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the UConn Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. If you require an accommodation, please contact Stamford Coordinator for Judaic Studies Professor Fred Roden at frederick.roden@uconn.edu or 203-251-8559. Attendance qualifies for honors credit.

About the Talk

No one is born hating or fearing other people. That has to be taught – and those harmful lessons seem to be similar, though they’re given in highly disparate cultures, languages, and places. Leaders around the world use particular kinds of rhetoric to turn groups of people violently against one another. But this rhetoric is, of course, nothing new. The vocabulary varies, but the same themes recur: members of other groups are depicted as threats so serious that violence against them comes to seem acceptable or even necessary. In this talk, drawing from both historical and contemporary examples, Dr. Cathy Buerger will outline a framework for identifying dangerous speech – any form of expression that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or commit violence against members of another group. The lecture will conclude with a discussion of productive responses to dangerous and otherwise harmful speech.

About the Speaker

Cathy Buerger is a Senior Researcher at the Dangerous Speech Project (DSP), a Washington, DC-based NGO that studies the relationship between speech and violence. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut, where her research examined how civil society activists work together to support positive norms and to uphold human rights. Her current research at the DSP focuses on civil society responses to dangerous and hateful speech online. She is a Research Affiliate of UConn's Economic and Social Rights Research Group, Managing Editor of the Journal of Human Rights, and an Editor for the Teaching Human Rights Database.

On Monday, September 9, UConn Stamford Professor Steven Wander will present "Flavius Josephus, Jewish Historian of the First Century, and his Influence on Imperial Roman and Early Medieval Art." The talk will be held at the UConn Stamford campus in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) from 5:00-6:00 pm.  

The talk is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the UConn Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. If you require an accommodation, please contact Stamford Coordinator for Judaic Studies Professor Fred Roden at frederick.roden@uconn.edu or 203-251-8559.

About the Talk

Art History Professor Dr. Wander will speak on the texts of Josephus concerning some of the most important artworks to survive: The Arch of Titus in Rome, the rear panel of the Franks (Auzon) Casket, and the Codex Amiatinus.

About the Speaker

Steven H. Wander, currently an adjunct professor of Art and Art History at the University of Connecticut, Stamford, holds a master's degree in medieval Art History from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD from Stanford University. Previously, he was a professor at the University of California, Irvine, where he taught advanced courses in medieval art, his specialty. Wander has published widely in the field with books, articles, and scholarly reviews. His recent work includes three papers on the influence of Josephus on artworks of the Middle Ages and a critical edition of the Joshua Roll. His paper in the Metropolitan Museum Journal is the basis for their display of seventh-century imperial silver plates and won the annual faculty award from the Medieval and Renaissance Center at UCLA. He has also received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Fulbright program.