November 14, 2011 | 10:00am-5:00pm | Temple University
Hillel Center for Jewish Life | 1441 Norris Street

6th Annual Race and Judaism Symposium:
Passing: Religion, Politics, and Peoplehood

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Congratulations

April Glaser

April Glaser, undergraduate assistant at the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies, has been invited to Cyprus to present her work at the Community Media Forum of Europe Conference supported by the European Union under the 'Europe for Citizens Programme 2011' and the United Nations Development Programme, Action for Cooperation and Trust (UNDP-ACT). As a scholar-activist, April will present on the recent success of grassroots efforts to create new community radio media policy in the United States.

Recommended Reading

Henry Giroux

Breivik's Fundamentalist War on Politics, and Ours

from truthout.org

Click Here for more about Henry Giroux

18-21 December 2011 / Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Forum on Contemporary Theory XIV International Conference

Transcending Disciplinary Decadence: Exploring Challenges of Teaching, Scholarship, and Research in the Humanities and the Social Sciences

The fourteenth International Conference of the Forum on Contemporary Theory will be held in Jaipur, Rajasthan, from the 18th to the 21st of December 2011 at the Fortune Bella Casa Hotel in collaboration with the IIS University.

Convener: Lewis R. Gordon, Temple University

Keynote Speaker: Arjun Appadurai, New York University

Plenary Speakers:

Paget Henry, Brown University

Enrique Dussel, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana

Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, University of California at Irvine

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Reccomended Music:

Emanuel King of Israel

Click Here to visit the artist's page

Monday, April 11, 2011; 5:30pm, Women's Study Lounge (8th Floor Anderson Hall)

Jacob S. Dorman, Assistant Professor, The University of Kansas

Bishop William Christian and William Saunders Crowdy pioneered Black Israelite and Black Jewish movements with the churches that resulted from their revelations of 1889 and 1892, respectively. Yet both Christian and Crowdy built on doctrinal and ritual innovations within the Holiness Movement. These innovations capitalized on the dispersion of settlement in western territories that made it difficult for East Coast-based churches to monitor and police their far-flung parishioners. Examining the influence of the Holiness movement on the rise of Black Israelite faiths allows us to see how space and social networks affected the rise of the those faiths. It also challenges us to think in terms not of roots but of rhizomes and spores, that is, less material and more ideational ways in which religious cultures spread, not through "vertical" genetic links and ancestral groups, but "horizontally" by invention, print culture, social networks, and imagination.

Dorman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Department of American Studies at the University of Kansas, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of African and African American Studies. He received his Ph.D. in U.S. History from UCLA in 2004, has held fellowships from Yale, Columbia, and Wesleyan Universities, and is currently a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Next year Oxford University Press will publish his first book, Chosen People: African Americans and the Rise of Black Judaism. Dorman's second book project argues that images of Islam and the Orient in popular culture played important roles in the advent of twentieth-century Black Muslim movements. Professor Dorman has published in the journal Nova Religio, in the journal Souls, and in anthologies on new religious movements, alternative African American religions, and the Harlem Renaissance.

March 24, 2011; 5pm, Women's Study Lounge (8th Floor Anderson Hall)

Warren Hoffman, Director, Arts and Cultural Programming for the Gershman Y in Philadelphia

With their shared heritages of slavery, discrimination and Diaspora, blacks and Jews have trod similar, yet distinctive paths. This presentation explores the various ways in which this complex history has manifested itself in films, plays and music. We'll watch and discuss clips from The Jazz Singer (1927), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Liberty Heights (1999), and Fires in the Mirror (1993). We'll look at these works to determine the contributions that African Americans and Jewish Americans have made to American popular culture at large, as well as to determine what this says about how blacks and Jews talk to and about each other.

Warren Hoffman is the Director of Arts and Cultural Programming for the Gershman Y in Philadelphia. Prior to that he served as the literary manager and dramaturg for Philadelphia Theatre Company. In New York, Warren was the Associate Artistic Director of Jewish Repertory Theatre in New York where he produced and dramaturged a season of Jewish musicals in concert. Warren was also a writer and reviewer for TalkinBroadway.com where he covered the Off-Broadway and cabaret scene. In addition to working in the theater community, Warren holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of California-Santa Cruz and currently teaches at Temple University. He recently earned rave reviews for his new book The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture published by Syracuse University Press. Warren is also a playwright and his new play The Last was recently named a recipient of the 2008 Foundation for Jewish Culture Theatre Projects Grant and was a finalist for the Dorothy Silver Playwriting Competition. His first play New Words received a reading at Philadelphia Theatre Workshop and was a finalist for the Christopher Brian Wolk Playwriting Award in New York. Warren is currently writing a book about race and the American musical.

March 21, 2011; 4pm, CHAT (10th Floor Gladfelter Hall)

Michael Paradiso-Michau

Abstract: In the discussion, I will briefly recount the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, and focus on the veritable storm that followed the publication of Hannah Arendt's report on the proceedings, first published in The New Yorker, and then in book form, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. In the fifty years that have passed since the trial, what is the status of Arendt's controversial report, and the "slogan" that is identified in the subtitle? Moreover, what do we think of the ideas and arguments that support this phenomenological discovery, that evil is or can be banal? My claim in this presentation, following Arendt, is that we need to muster our interpretive efforts toward understanding the connection between the status of human thoughtfulness and the possibility of preventing human atrocity.

Michael Paradiso-Michau (Ph.D., Purdue University, 2008) is Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy at North Central College, and Adjunct Professor in the Graham School of General Studies at the University of Chicago. He is co-founder of the North American Levinas Society, and has published articles, book chapters, and reviews in Continental Philosophy Review, Atlantic Journal of Communication, and Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture. His forthcoming book is The Ethical in Kierkegaard and Levinas (Continuum). He is currently working on a book-length phenomenological investigation into the experience of thoughtfulness, tentatively titled It's the Thought That Counts: A Portrait of Human Thoughtfulness.

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November 15, 2010 | Temple University
10:00am-5:00pm | Paley Library Lecture Hall, Ground Floor
5:00pm – 6:00pm | Gladfelter Hall, 10th Floor (Center for the Humanities)

5th Annual Race and Judaism Symposium:
Lost Tribes: Ancient and Contemporary Perspectives

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Tuesday, March 23, 2010 | 1:30-3:30pm | Temple University | Weigley Lounge | 914 Gladfelter Hall

Professor Joseph will discuss his new book, Dark Days, Bright Nights:  From Black Power to Barack Obama (Basic Books) on Tues., March 23, from 1:30 to 3:30 P.M. in the Weigley Room.  A past recipient of a Woodrow Wilson fellowship, he is the author or editor of four books, including Waiting Til’ the Midnight Hour:  A Narrative History of Black Power in America.  Professor Joseph received the Ph.D. in History from Temple University in 2000. 

Sponsored by the History Department, the Center for the Humanities at Temple, and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies. 

November 19, 2009 | 10:30am-5:30pm | Temple University | Paley Library Lecture Hall, Ground Floor

Annual Race and Judaism Symposium:
In Every Tongue—In Memory of Gary Tobin

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PREVIOUS EVENTS

May 31, 2009 | San José Public Library

Lecture and Book Discussion on The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar

150 East San Fernando Street  
San José, CA 95112
TIME: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

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October 6 , 2008 | Temple University

Join us on October 6th for a symposium at the Paley Library Lecture Hall at Temple University, located on the ground floor of of Paley Library. Guest participants include John L. Jackson, Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania, Edith Bruder of the University of London, and Avishai Mekonen and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen, who will show and discuss their film 400 Miles to Freedom. Temple University participants include Zain Abdullah, Rebecca Alpert, Jane Gordon, Lewis Gordon, Laura Levitt, and Terry Rey.

Click Here for a flyer of Exploring Race in Contemporary Jewish Life

November 5 , 2007 | Temple University

JEWS AND RACE: A ONE DAY CONFERENCE

Join us on November 5th for a one day conference at the Center for Humanities at Temple, located on the 10th floor of Gladfelter Hall. Guest participants include Henry Goldschmidt of Wesleyan University, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz of Queens College, CCNY, and Jonathan Schorsch of Columbia University.  Temple University participants include Michael Alexander, Rebecca Alpert, Aryeh Botwinik, Jane Gordon, Lewis Gordon, Andre Key, Laura Levitt, Terry Rey, David Ross Fryer, Jeremy Schipper, David Waldstreicher, and David Watt.

Click Here for a flyer of Jews and Race: A One Day Conference.

The Face of Judaism

Hosted by Dr. Lewis Gordon, himself a Black Jew and founder of Temple's Center for Afro-Jewish Studies, The Face of Judaism will focus on the social and historical anthropology of Judaism. Dr. Gordon will reveal the often-obscured ethnic diversity of Judaism. Philadelphia alone has eighteen Black synagogues, and a significant number of Native American Jews. Dr. Gordon will expose the ethnically heterogeneous nature of Judaism. Location: Temple University's Anderson Hall, 12th St. between Berks & Montgomery, Philadelphia.

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Bikkurim: An Incubator for New Jewish Ideas

Bikkurim: An Incubator for New Jewish Ideas is accepting applications for 2008. Bikkurim seeks innovative, NYC-based, Jewish, non-profit projects that are in early stages of formation and organizational growth. We provide free office space, free and subsidized capacity-building consulting, small stipends, and a peer community with other Jewish start-up initiatives. Bikkurim is a joint project of UJC, JESNA, and the Kaminer Family.

Pre-applications can be downloaded from www.bikkurim.org and are due February 1, 2008. Full applications, by invitation only, will be due April 11, 2008. Finalists will be interviewed and selected in mid-June. Residency begins in July, 2008. For more information, contact Nina Bruder at nina@bikkurim.org or 212-284-6892.