Events & Calendars "Independent Jewish Women in Medieval Cairo: Enterprise and Ambiguity"

Judith Baskin, the Philip H. Knight Professor in Humanities in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon, will speak on "Independent Jewish Women in Medieval Cairo: Enterprise and Ambiguity" on Wednesday, March 23, at 4:15 p.m. in 101 Chapin Hall.  

Professor Baskin served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies from 2004 until 2006. A Ph.D. recipient in medieval studies from Yale University in 1976, she taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1976 to 1988, and at SUNY Albany, where she was chair of the department of Judaic studies from 1988 to 2000. Dr. Baskin is the author of <i>Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature</i> (2002) and <i>Pharaoh's Counsellors: Job, Jethro and Balaam in Rabbinic and Patristic Tradition</i> (1983). Her most recent edited volumes are <i>The Cambridge Dictionary of Judaism and Jewish Culture</i> (2011) and <i>The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and Culture</i> (2010), co-edited with Kenneth Seeskin and a 2011 National Jewish Book Award winner. Other edited volumes include <i>Jewish Women in Historical Perspective</i> (1998), now in its second edition, and <i>Women of the Word: Jewish Women and Jewish Writing</i> (1994). Professor Baskin is currently writing a feminist commentary on Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud.

The lecture is sponsored by the Religion Department and the Willis D. Wood Fund and is free and open to the public.