2018-08-21
- During her undergraduate days at Illinois, Meirav Malter had a common problem faced by curious people: She wanted to study pretty much everything. That’s how she wound up double majoring in global studies and Jewish studies with a minor in history—including courses on Hebrew, Arabic, Judaism, and Middle Eastern statehood, not to mention her research on Bedouin tribes of the Sinai Peninsula.
Part...
2018-08-17 - Dov Weiss, Assistant Professor of Religion, recently discussed his award-winning book, "Pious Irreverence", on the "Judaism Unbound" podcast: ...
2018-05-01 - The Fred S. Bailey Fellowship for Community Leadership, Service, and Activism supports University of Illinois Urbana campus graduate and professional students who have shown passion, creativity, innovation, and commitment through community organizing, activism, and/or service in one or more of the following areas: social justice, environment, global engagement and/or interfaith cooperation.
2018-04-25 - On April 23, 2018, the UIUC campus and beyond got a sneak-preview of Sayed Kashua’s newest novel, Track Changes. Sayed is a prolific and internationally lauded Palestinian-Israeli journalist, novelist, columnist, and screenwriter. So far, Track Changes is only out in Hebrew (and recently on the Israeli best seller list). Sayed read part of the soon-to-be-...
2018-04-25 - We are delighted that three affiliated faculty of the Program in Jewish Culture & Society or the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies are included in the newest news from LAS!
2018-04-18 - Ellie graduated with a minor in Jewish Studies in 2011, went on to earn an MSW, and has been with the Chicago-based, vision-driven Jewish group Mishkan for three and a half years. Mishkan seeks to build Jewish community through holding shabbat and high holy day services and to foster social justice through organizing for refugees and providing other services. A new and important aspect of Mishkan...
2018-04-10 - We were delighted that Julia Phillips Cohen was the 2018 Einhorn lecturer and joined us for two events on the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus on Monday, April 9. A packed to capacity noon workshop entitled “The Past as Foreign Country: Sephardi Jews and the Spanish Past” and then a standing room only 5pm lecture entitled “Jews for Jihad? Jewish Citizens in an...
2018-04-10 - Professor Amnon Reichman visited the University of Illinois College of Law on March 8-9, 2018. The visit was sponsored by the Israel Studies Project. Amnon Reichman is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Haifa and Principal Investigator at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law Under Extreme Conditions. His areas of expertise include separation of powers, theories of judicial...
2018-04-04 - When it comes to choosing a university, average class sizes are a point of anxiety for many prospective students. Getting a great education boils down to making connections with peers and faculty, and many students wish to do so in an environment that promotes these interactions. With an 18:1 student to faculty ratio, a majority of classes within the College of LAS aren’t lecture style, but...
2018-04-03 - I created Dialogue: A Polish-Jewish Film Series about a year ago with the intention of starting a forum for cross-cultural dialogue around Polish-Jewish issues that extend well beyond the scope of this particular cultural space. The goal of the Series is to breakdown perceived binaries between “Polish” and “Jewish” cultures through dialogue and discussion about a film. I was inspired by...
2018-03-05 - On Monday, March 5th, Michael Shapiro, co-founder and first director of the Program in Jewish Culture & Society, returned to campus to speak about Wrestling With Shylock: Jewish Responses to The Merchant of Venice, in celebration of the essay collection with that name edited by Shapiro and Edna Nahshon and published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Speaking to an...
2017-11-06 - On Monday, November 6, 2017, with generous support from the Greenfield Lynch lecture series, we hosted a panel about James Friedman’s striking series, “12 Nazi Concentration Camps.” The panel included James Friedman, Gary Weissman (University of Cincinnati), and me. For the month of November Friedman’s series was on display at the Illini Union Gallery via projections. I would like to thank...
2017-02-17 - Steven Weitzman, a professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s department of religious studies, will present a lecture titled “The Double Helix of Jewish History: Genetics and the Search for the Origin of the Jews” on Monday, Feb. 20, at 5 p.m. in the Knight Auditorium at Spurlock Museum of World Cultures, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana. Weitzman will explore the scholarly quest to understand...
2016-04-18 - The Program in Jewish Culture and Society and the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies organized a special visit from Peter Balakian, a 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning Armenian American poet, memoirist, and foremost scholar on the Armenian Genocide. This visit included Balakian delivering the Center for Advanced Study (CAS)/MillerComm lecture (video...
2016-02-11 - The Krouse Family Visiting Scholars in Judaism and Western Culture Fund made another exciting visit possible this year. Dagmar Herzog a Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, and her meticulous research on sexuality and fascism has been highly influential. Her most recent books include Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History (2011); ...