Fred Astren: “Medieval Jewish History and the New Mediterranean Studies
November 9, 2009, 4:00 PM
Humanities 1, Room 210
Fred Astren, Chair of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University, holds degrees in Medieval History, Arabic, and Near Eastern Studies.
Tasha Oren: “I’m Going to Make You Love Me: History and Israel’s Tele-Imagination”
Television has taken part in articulation of cultural and national identity all over the globe. How is a sense of “the local” changing as media grows increasingly mobile and new global television forms dominate world-wide programming? In Israel, a debate about television’s birth escalated to a national argument over occupation of Palestinian territories, relations with Arab neighbors, and it’s internal, conflicting visions of shared culture and identity.
James Young: “Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial Problem and Mine”
The selection of a design for the Berlin Memorial to Europe’s murdered Jews was a contentious one. After September 11th, the memorial for those who died in the World Trade Center was compared by some to holocaust memorials before it, and by one reporter specifically to the Berlin Memorial. How did it come to pass that the memorial at Ground Zero would evoke Berlin’s Memorial to Europe’s murdered Jews?