Sarah Hammerschlag, Professor of Religion and Literature, Philosophy of Religions and History of Judaism will give her inaugural lecture as the John Nuveen Professor in the Divinity School and the College. 

Join us on Thursday, May 2, 2024 at 5pm, Swift Hall Lecture Hall (3rd floor) for “Judaism and the Politics of Minority Identity: The Case of Post-war France.”

The lecture will consider why it is so difficult to discuss the relationship between Judaism and minority identity and will examine two models for approaching the issue that arise out of the French Jewish Intellectual Context.

Hammerschlag is a scholar in the area of religion and literature. Her research has focused on the position of Judaism in the post-World War II French intellectual scene—a field that puts her at the crossroads of numerous disciplines and scholarly approaches including philosophy, literary studies and intellectual history.

She is the author of “The Figural Jew: Politics and Identity in Postwar French Thought” (2010) and “Broken Tablets: Levinas, Derrida and the Literary Afterlife of Religion” (2016) and the editor of “Modern French Jewish Thought: Writings on Religion and Politics” (2018). Hammerschlag’s essays on Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Jewish Quarterly Review and Shofar, among other places. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled “Sowers and Sages: The Renaissance of Judaism in Postwar Paris.” Her most recent book is “Devotion: Three Inquiries in Religion, Literature and Political Imagination” (2021), co-written with Constance Furey and Amy Hollywood.

A reception will follow.

Individuals who need an accommodation, please contact Irema Halilovic in advance at iremahalilovic@uchicago.edu.