Hillel Kieval is the Gloria M. Goldstein Professor of Jewish History and Thought at Washington University. His research focuses on transformations in Jewish culture and society in East Central Europe (Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Poland) from the Enlightenment to the Second World War, including the effects of modernization projects, ethnic and national struggles, social conflict, and antisemitism on Jewish life and Jewish-Gentile relations. He is the author of the seminal books The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870-1918(1988) and Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands(2000). Currently, he is at work on a book project titled “Blood Inscriptions: The ‘Ritual Murder’ Trial in Modern Europe, a social and cultural history of the reemergence of ritual murder trials against Jews in Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Russia from 1882 to 1914. Professor Kieval’s lecture is the keynote of the conference “The Strange World of Ritual Murder: Culture, Politics, and Belief in Eastern Europe and Beyond.”

Location: Alice Campbell Alumni Center

Date: 10/13/14, 5 pm

Video of lecture here.