UCSIA/IJS Chair 2012-2013: Prof. dr. David Ruderman
During the academic year 2012-2013, the fifth edition of this initiative, Prof. dr. David B. Ruderman (Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Pennsylvania) will hold the chair for the second time. He will deliver two evening lectures for a general audience, as well as the course "Between Cross and Crescent: The History of Jewish Civilization from the Rise of Islam to Spinoza" within the department of history of the University of Antwerp. This course can be followed by anybody interested in the subject, but also as optional course for students within the faculty of arts of the University of Antwerp (bachelor level, three credits).
Public lecture I
Thursday 21st February 2013 at 20.00 PM / Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp
God and Nature: Jews, Christians and the Challenge of Early Modern Science. A Textual Dialogue between Profs. Steven Vanden Broecke and David Ruderman
Prof. dr. David Ruderman in dialogue with Prof. dr. Steven Vanden Broecke (Ghent University)
Lecture in English
Public lecture II
Thursday 7th March 2013 at 20.00 / Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp
How Jews and Christians Read the Opening Chapters of the Book of Genesis: A Textual Dialogue between Profs. Peter Stallybrass and David Ruderman
Prof. dr. David Ruderman in dialogue with Prof. dr. Peter Stallybrass (University of Pennsylvania)
Lecture in English, followed by a reception.
Attendance is free of charge
Five-part course "Between Cross and Crescent: The History of Jewish Civilization from the Rise of Islam to Spinoza"
Dates: 20 en 27 February; 6, 13 en 20 March - always from 18.00 until 21.15 - University of Antwerp - City Campus (room R.213 for 20 Feb, room R.125 for all other dates)
This course offers an overview of medieval Jewish history and thought from Mohammed to Spinoza, and will discuss the Jewish community in the context of Islam and Christendom both in the medieval and early modern periods, as well as medieval Jewish philosophy (Saadia, Maimonides, Ha-Levi, Kabbalah, Luria, etc.) and Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim relations. The last part of the course considers the early modern period - renaissance and reformation, ending with 17th century Amsterdam.
This course can be followed as optional course for students within the faculty of arts of the University of Antwerp, but also by anybody interested in the subject. For more information and registration as an optional course, please contact the Institute of Jewish Studies.
David B. Ruderman is the Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History and the Ella Darivoff Director of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Ruderman was educated at the City College of New York, the Teacher’s Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Columbia University. He received his rabbinical degree from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, and his PhD in Jewish history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Professor Ruderman has taught in the Graduate School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Hebrew University. In June 2001, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture honored him with its lifetime achievement award for his work in Jewish history.
Peter Stallybrass is Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English and of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. He has held visiting positions at the University of London, and, as Directeur d’Études, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has received fellowships from the American Council for Learned Societies, the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Globe Theater, London, the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1999, he was chair of the English Institute at Harvard University, and he has been a Trustee of the Institute since 2002. He has written extensively on literary and cultural theory, and on the history of the book
Steven Vanden Broecke is a specialist of early modern history of science, history of magic, and intellectual history, with a focus on the relation between religion, magic and science at the Ghent Centre for the History of Science. Most of his work has focused on the Low Countries, Italy and Denmark of the 15th and 16th centuries. He has published a monograph on Renaissance astrology, on the basis of a dissertation which was awarded the bianual Jan-Gillis prize of the Royal Flemish Academy for Sciences and Arts (2002). He is a senior member of the editorial board of Lias (Journal of Early Modern Intellectual Culture and Its Sources) and President (since 2008) of the history section of the Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor taal-en letterkunde en geschiedenis.