Naomi Seidman, a scholar who specializes in Jewish culture and literature, will deliver Carleton College’s annual Forkosh Family Lecture in Judaic Studies and Religion on Wednesday, Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. in the Severance Great Hall. Entitled “The Marriage Plot: Sexuality, Secularization and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Literature,” Seidman’s lecture will explore how the secularizing trends of the 18^th and 19^th centuries worked through art and literature to influence Jewish sexual norms. This event is free and open to the public.

 Naomi Seidman is Director of the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies and Koret Professor of Jewish Culture at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. She also serves on the faculty of Jewish studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Seidman’s scholarly work has focused on the relationship between literature, sexuality and Judaism. Her most recent book, Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation (U. of Chicago Press, 2006), looks at how the difficult relationship between Christians and Jews has influenced the often contested translation of Jewish texts into Western languages. Seidman is also the author of A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish (U. of California Press, 1997), which looks at the gender-related issues underlying the close relationship between the Hebrew and Yiddish languages. Her research at the Graduate Theological Union currently focuses on translation studies and on the sexual transformation of Jewish communities.

This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Department of Religion. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4232. The Severance Great Hall is located on College Street on the Carleton College campus in Northfield.