Carleton’s Forkosh Family Lecture Focuses on Israeli Culture and Society

Professor Yael Zerubavel will give the annual Forkosh Family Lecture in Judaic Studies at Carleton College on Thursday, February 25 at 8 p.m. in the Severance Great Hall. mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">The founding director 11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman""> of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life and a professor of bold">Jewish studies and h font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">istory at Rutgers University, Zerubavel is an expert on 11.0pt">the development of Israeli culture, collective memory and identity. Entitled “Imagining Exile in the Homeland: Cultural Diversity and the Politics of Remembrance in Israel,” Zerubavel’s presentation is free and open to the public.

In conjunction with Professor Zerubavel’s visit, Carleton will sponsor a symposium of student research on “Faith and Fiction: Exploring Israeli National Identity.” The symposium will be held on Thursday, February 25 and Friday, February 26 from 8:30 – 9:30 a.m. and from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. Sixteen Carleton students, all of whom participated in a two-week study abroad trip to Israel in December 2009, will give brief presentations on their independent research. All four sessions of the symposium will be held in the Athanaeum of the Carleton College Library.

Zerubavel is the author of the award-winning volume, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 1995), 11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">which won the 1996 Salo Baron Prize of the American Academy for Jewish Research. This interdisciplinary study has been widely quoted by scholars in various fields in Jewish studies, Israel studies, history, political science, sociology, and anthropology.

She Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> has written numerous articles and has lectured widely in the US, Israel, and Europe on Israeli culture, collective memory and identity, national myths, war and trauma, and the Jewish immigrant experience. She is currently completing a book entitled Desert in the Promised Land: Nationalism, Politics, and Symbolic Landscapes (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press), and working on a book based on her 2009 italic">Stroum Lectures, Encounters with the Past (to be published by the University of Washington Press), in which she explores the processes of secularization of and recreation of traditions that reshape Israelis’ perceptions of the past.

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Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Professor Zerubavel is a member of the international advisory boards of the journals Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Israel Studies mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">, Journal of Israeli History, Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">and bold">Israel Studies Forum, and Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds; she also serves on the editorial boards of Rutgers University Press series “Jewish Cultures of the World,” and the Academic Studies Press series “Israel: Society, Culture, and History.” mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">

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Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">She has been a fellow at the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (1994-95), the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the Ben-Gurion Research Center at Ben-Gurion University in Sde Boker.

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Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">This event is sponsored by Forkosh Family Lecture Series at Carleton College. For more information, contact the Department of Religion at (507) 222-4232.