Derek Penslar, a professor of Jewish history at the University of Toronto, will present the Carleton College Forkosh Family Lecture in Judaic Studies at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 23 in the Severance Great Hall. The talk, entitled “Jews into Israelis: Zionism as a Revolutionary Project,” is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will also be served.
An expert on Jewish political, economic, and cultural life in modern Europe and on the history of Zionism and the State of Israel, Penslar is the Samuel Zacks Professor of Jewish History at the University of Toronto. He is the author or editor of eight books, including Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870-1918 (Indiana University Press, 1991), Contemporary Antisemitism: Canada and the World (co-edited with Michael Marrus and Janice Gross Stein; University of Toronto Press, 2005), and Israel in History: The Jewish State in Contemporary Perspective (Rutledge, 2006). His current projects include a book on Jewish attitudes towards war and the military, and a documentary history of Zionism.
Penslar is the co-editor of two major scholarly journals, The Journal of Israeli History and Jewish Social Studies, and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Columbia universities. Penslar is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and of the American Academy for Jewish Research.
The Great Hall is located in Severance Hall on the Carleton campus off of College Street. This talk is sponsored by the Department of Middle Eastern Languages. For more information and disability accommodations, contact jsherwin@carleton.edu or call (507) 222-5437.