February 18, 2000

Jacob Lassner, author of “Demonizing the Queen of Sheba,” to Discuss Jewish-Muslim Relations on March 2 at Middlebury College

Jacob Lassner, professor of Jewish civilization at Northwestern University, will deliver the 12th annual Hannah A. Quint Lecture in Jewish studies at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 2 at Middlebury College. His lecture, titled “The Dialectic of Jewish-Muslim Relations,” will take place in the Robert A. Jones Seminar Room of the Geonomics House on Hillcrest Road off College Street (Route 125). The talk is free and open to the public.

Lassner is the Phillip and Ethel Klutznick Professor of Jewish Civilization and director of Jewish studies at Northwestern University. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Annenberg Institute, he has published several books and numerous articles on Near Eastern history and Jewish-Muslim relations. Among his recent works are “Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Post-Biblical Judaism and Medieval Islam” and “Remembering the Middle East: Forged Identities, Competing Narratives, Contested Spaces.”

The Hannah A. Quint Lecture in Jewish Studies was established in 1987 by Hannah A. Quint and her son Eliot Levinson of the Middlebury class of 1964. The mandate of the lectureship is to provoke thought in the College, the Middlebury community, and the region on issues of the moment in Jewish history, religion, and culture.

The event is sponsored by the religion department of Middlebury College. Contact Charlene Barrett in this department at 802-443-5289 for more information.