Princeton University

2008-2009

The 2008-2009 Lapidus lecture was held on Monday, December 1, 2008 in the James M. Stewart '32 Theater, 185 Nassauu Street.  Josh Kun, Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communication, Department of American Studies & Ethnicity, USC, gave a lecture entitled "And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: Music, Memory, and the Politics of Jewish-American History."  He is the author of multiple publications including Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (University of California Press). He received his Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from U.C. Berkeley and worked closely with the late Michael Rogin, as well as Leon Litwack and the late Larry Levine. He was recently awarded a Casden Grant for his research on African American and Jewish American popular music culture. The project he is working on will take the form of a musical anthology, and it is tentatively titled “Go Down Moses: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations.” Click here for more information about Josh Kun.  Professor Kun also delivered a noon workshop on the same day.

In the fall 2008-2009 semester, Professor Jenna Weissman Joselit taught Growing Up Jewish in America (AMS/JDS 334).  And in Spring 2009, Professor Esther Schor taught American Jewish Writers (ENG/AMS/JDS 365).

2007-2008 

The 2008 Lapidus lecture was held on February 20, 2008, with Jonathan Sarna delivering a lecture on "The Democratization of American Judaism" in McCormick 101 at 4:30 p.m.  Jonathan Sarna is the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and director of its Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program.  He also chairs the Academic Advisory and Editorial Board of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati and is chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.  Author or editor of more than twenty books on American Jewish history and life, his most recent book, American Judaism: A History (Yale University Press), won the 2004 "Jewish Book of the Year Award" from the Jewish Book Council.  Professor Sarna also presented a workshop on "The Mystical World of Colonial American Jews" at 12 noon on February 20 in Chancellor Green 105.  Professor Sarna also acted as an advisor and contributor to the newly premiered PBS series, The Jewish Americans.

In the spring 2008 semester, Professor Suzanne Last Stone, of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, taught a course on Jewish Law and American Legal Theory, AMS/JDS 322. 

2006-2007

In February 2007, Leon Wieseltier presented the inaugural lecture, titled “Of What Use is History to American Jewish History?”