Conference to Honor Joel Kraemer
Oct. 27–28, 2004
About Joel Kraemer | The Two Gentlemen of Cordova | Program
Introduction
The University of Chicago Divinity School presents “The Two Gentlemen of Cordova,” a conference in honor of Joel L. Kraemer, the John Henry Barrows Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies, who retired from the University of Chicago faculty on June 30, 2003, after ten years of service. Please join us on October 27–28 for the conference, which will include lectures, a panel discussion, and a concluding reception for the honoree. All events will take place in Swift Hall, on the University of Chicago campus, 1025 East 58th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637. For more information, contact the Divinity School’s Communications Office at 773-702-8230.
About Joel Kraemer
Joel Kraemer received his B.A. from Rutgers University in 1954, his M.H.L. from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1959, and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1967. He taught at both J.T.S. and Yale before moving to Israel in 1971 to serve on the faculty of Tel Aviv University, where he chaired the Islamic Studies program. He joined the University of Chicago’s faculty formally in 1994.
Kraemer’s scholarship and teaching have done much to enhance our understanding of how the heritage of classical antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, etc.) was assimilated in medieval Islamic civilization by Christians, Jews, and Muslims, members of monotheistic faiths based on revelation. He has made signal contributions to our understanding of a moment when Athens and Jerusalem truly did meet, as exemplified in such books as Philosophy in the Renaissance of Islam (1986); Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam (1992); and his forthcoming More Precious Than Rubies: Women’s Letters from the Cairo Geniza and A Life of Maimonides.
The Two Gentlemen of Cordova
This fall, the Divinity School will host a conference to celebrate the scholarship and teaching of Joel Kraemer, on the occasion of his retirement. The conference, entitled “The Two Gentlemen of Cordova,” will include a series of lectures that takes up the themes of Kraemer’s scholarship. Specifically, it will focus on the contemporary representatives of a medieval enlightenment, Averroes and Maimonides. Each was a jurist, physician, scientist, and philosopher, and each was translated into Latin and had a significant impact on Scholastic thought (Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas in particular). Averroes was certainly the greatest of the medieval Muslim thinkers, as Maimonides was the greatest of the Jewish thinkers. They had much in common beyond the similarity of their vitae.
Conference Program
| Wednesday, October 27
10:00 a.m. 12:00 noon 2:00 p.m. "Averroes and Maimonides on Divine Immanence and Transcendence" 4:00 p.m. |
Thursday, October 28
9:00 a.m.
11:00 a.m.
2:00 p.m.
4:00 p.m. Reception in Swift Common Room |
