CofC professor Ashley Walters will talk about her current book project over brunch. She will tell a story of revolution and romance between two East European-born Jewish sisters named Anna and Rose Strunsky—young and captivating writers dedicated to the socialist revolution—and an impressive cast of well-known American authors, including Jack London, William English Walling, Arthur Bullard, and Sinclair Lewis.

Please join Professors Chad Gibbs and Ashley Walters for a discussion on Russia’s war in Ukraine with Dr. Amber Nickell of Fort Hays State University.

Almost three quarters (72%) of the population in Miami-Dade county is of Latinx/Hispanic origin. Spanish of various accents can be heard in supermarkets, schools and synagogues. Latin American immigrants from Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico down to the Southern Cone have been fleeing social and economic upheaval for decades. Miami, with its close proximity to Latin America, widely spoken Spanish and commercial and job opportunities is an obvious destination for both Jewish and non-Jewish Latin American/Latinx immigrants. Miami has the largest influx of Jewish immigrants from Latin America, immigrants who have entered the community at a pivotal point when existing congregations, schools and Jewish community centers have been losing members. In this talk, Limonic will discuss how Latin American Jews, with their strong commitment to communal ties and institutions, have invigorated existing communities while forging new identities as panethnic Latinx Jews.

When Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, he left behind a mountain of personal debt, which forced his heirs to sell his beloved Monticello home and all of its possessions. The Levys of Monticello is a documentary film that tells the little-known story of the Levy family, which owned and carefully preserved Monticello for nearly a century – far longer than Jefferson or his descendants. The remarkable story of the Levy family also intersects with the rise of antisemitism that runs throughout the course of American history.

Professor Eli Rosenblatt will talk about the work of Abraham Philip Samson (1872-1958)—the relatively unknown Surinamese Jewish activist, writer, and pharmacist—as a lens on the complex position of Jews in late 19th and early 20th-century Suriname, a Caribbean country on the northeastern coast of South America ruled by the Netherlands until 1975. Since much excellent recent scholarship has focused on Surinamese Jewish culture in the era of slavery, this talk will discuss how Samson, a Surinamese Jewish descendant of both free Jews and enslaved people, inherited and represented the legacies of that era in political, ethical, and theological contexts.