FALL 2018 LECTURES
The Power of Palestine: Imperishable in a Transnational World
A critical analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Karam Dana
Associate Professor of Middle East Politics and Islamic Studies, University of Washington
Bothell
with an introduction by Feryaz Ocakli
Associate Professor & Associate Chair, Department of Political Science, Skidmore College
Thursday, September 27
7:30 PM, Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall
Free and open to the public
Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty fade away with every Israeli settlement expansion on Palestinian land, and every US foreign policy decision that further empowers the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Public opinion data from Palestine highlight Palestinian society’s awareness of the challenges they face in their daily lives, and how they see their future moving forward. Palestinian resistance has become more efficiency-based and increasingly focused on finding new ways to challenge Israel and its policy towards Palestinians. These new transnational approaches have made Palestine more central to the domestic politics of many countries, including the United States.
Jews, Muslims, and Music in the 20th Century Maghrib: a History in Three Records
A lecture by Chris Silver
Segal Family Assistant Professor in Jewish History and Culture, Department of Jewish
Studies, McGill University
with an introduction by Murat Yildiz
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Skidmore College
Monday, October 22
7:30 PM. Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain hall
For much of the twentieth century, North African Jews played an outsized role as both music-makers and purveyors of music across the Maghrib. In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, all under French rule until the middle of the last century, indigenous Jewish vocalists, instrumentalists, and sonic impresarios of all manner utilized the phonograph to record a disappearing classical tradition––described alternately as “Arab,” “Muslim,” and “Andalusian”— while simultaneously pioneering popular musical forms mixed in style and language. Those efforts engendered fervent responses from a range of Jewish and Muslim fans and critics, and so too, from French authorities apprehensive about the increasingly unfettered flow of recorded music that stirred passions so. Through a focus on three such phonograph records and their trajectories, this talk explores both Jewish history and Jewish-Muslim relations in the region anew.
From the East Side to the West Side: The Jewish West Side Story
A lecture by Elizabeth A. Wells
Dean of Arts and Pickard-Bell Chair in Music, Mount Allison University
with an introduction by Sarah Day-O’Connell
Associate Professor of Music, Skidmore College
THURSDAY, october 25
7 PM, arthur zankel music center, helen filene ladd hall
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
West Side Story is an iconic musical that galvanized its first audience in 1957. Although the work is about juvenile delinquency in the streets of Manhattan between Puerto Ricans and so-called "Americans," the original story surrounded Catholics and Jews fighting on New York's streets. This presentation investigates the ways in which Jewish music and values continued to infuse the work through its transition to the West Side Story that we all know and love.
About the Jacob Perlow Series: A generous grant from the estate of Jacob Perlow - an immigrant to the United States in the 1920s, a successful business man deeply interested in religion and philosophy, and a man who was committed to furthering Jewish education - supports annual lectures and presentations to the College and Capital District community on issues broadly related to Jews and Judaism.