Promised Land: Exodus and America: Symposium: Promised Lands: The American Immigrant Novel (10/26)

10/22/2008-10/26/2008

Gish Jen and Jamaica Kincaid, in conversation with Susan Lanser

“And so suffering, fearing, brooding, rejoicing, we crept nearer and nearer to the coveted shore, until, on a glorious May morning, six weeks after our departure from Polotzk, our eyes beheld the Promised Land.” Early Jewish American writers, like Mary Antin in this passage from The Promised Land, consciously played with themes from Exodus as they explored the new worlds of Brownsville and the Lower East Side. That tradition has continued, even as the ranks of immigrant writers have grown to include men and women from Asia, South America, Africa, the Caribbean, and other parts of the world. Novelists Gish Jen and Jamaica Kincaid discussed how their own books and other immigrant novels have drawn on the theme of the Promised Land. Their conversation was moderated by Susan Lanser, professor of English and Comparative Literature at Brandeis.

Gish Jen is the author of the novels Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, The Love Wife and Who’s Irish, a book of stories. Her honors include the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 on the island of Antigua and came to the United States in 1967. She is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including Mr. Potter, Annie John, Lucy, A Small Place, and The Autobiography of My Mother. She was a contributing writer to the New Yorker from 1976 to 1995. She now teaches creative writing and African American Studies at Harvard.

Susan S. Lanser is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Women's and Gender Studies at Brandeis University. A scholar of gender, sexuality, and the novel, she chaired the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Brandeis from 2001 until 2007. She is the author of Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice, among other books.

Promised Land: Exodus and America: Symposium: Exodus: Story of a Nation (10/26)

10/22/2008-10/26/2008

Adam Kirsch and Stephen Prothero, in conversation with Elisa New

Exodus is the story of the emergence of the Jewish nation, but for many early Americans it was also the story that gave meaning to their own historic enterprise, whether they were Puritans, African Americans, Mormons, or Jews themselves. Adam Kirsch and Stephen Prothero explored how an old story defined a new nation, and how the sensibilities of early Americans were, in some respects, as much Jewish as Christian.

Adam Kirsch, a book critic for the New York Sun, is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and the New Republic. He is the author of two poetry collections, The Thousand Wells and Invasions, and two works of nonfiction on poetry, The Wounded Surgeon and The Modern Element. His most recent book is Benjamin Disraeli, a biography of the 19th-century novelist and statesman, publishes as part of the Nextbook/Schocken Jewish Encounters series.

Stephen Prothero is the Chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University and the author of numerous books, most recently American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon and the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy: What Americans Need to Know. He frequently comments on religion on public radio and on television. He was also a guest on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart and "The Oprah Winfrey Show." A regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, he has also written for the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Slate, Salon, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Boston Globe.

Elisa New is a professor of English and American Literature at Harvard University. She writes on subjects including the American Puritans, 19th century American literature, American poetry 1630's to the present day, and the literature of American Jews. The author of The Regenerate Lyric: Theology and Innovation in American Poetry and The Line's Eye: Poetic Experience, American Sight; more recent projects include Jacob's Cane: A Memoir of Jewish Civilization (forthcoming from Basic Books) and Where the Meanings Are: The Literature of New England Reappraised (forthcoming from Harvard University Press). Elisa New lives in Brookline with her husband, Larry Summers.

Promised Land: Exodus and America: Symposium: Go Down, Moses: The Making of an African American Hero (10/26)

10/22/2008-10/26/2008

Nicholas Lemann and Orlando Patterson, in conversation with Beverly Morgan-Welch

The story of how Moses freed the Jews from slavery in Egypt became a touchstone for African American slaves and continues to inform African Americans’ sense of themselves and their history. Nicholas Leman and Orlando Patterson discussed how Moses became an African American hero. They explored emancipation, the Great Migration, and the civil rights movement, as well as cultural representations of Moses, from nineteenth-century spirituals to contemporary popular culture. Beverly Morgan-Welch wil moderate the discussion.

Nicholas Lemann is the author of five books, including Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War and The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America. Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, he has written widely for such publications as The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and Slate. Lemann continues to write for The New Yorker, and serves on the boards of directors of the Authors Guild, the Center for the Humanities at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and the Society of American Historians.

Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard. His work addresses such issues as the nature and dynamics of slavery and resistance, the construction and diffusion of freedom, globalization and reggae music, and the sources and problems of ethnic identity. His many books include Slavery and Social Death, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, and The Ordeal of Integration. He is currently completing a book on the meaning and experience of freedom in America. His columns have appeared in the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.

Beverly Morgan-Welch is Executive Director of the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket. She created the museum's popular Underground Railroad Overnight Adventures and oversaw acquisition of the Florence Higginbotham House on Nantucket. She is a member of both the Colonial Society of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Promised Land: Exodus and America: Symposium: The Ten Commandments in America (10/26)

10/22/2008-10/26/2008

Noah Feldman and Jenna Weissman Joselit, in conversation with Alan Wolfe

Noah Feldman and Jenna Weissman Joselit talked with Alan Wolfe about the legacy of the Ten Commandments in America. Ranging over culture, politics, religion, and the law, they discussed headline-grabbing debates about church and state and the big screen extravaganzas of Cecil B. DeMille, as well as the role of the Ten Commandments in shaping domestic life and vernacular culture.

Noah Feldman is a Professor at Harvard Law School, specializes in constitutional studies, with particular emphasis on the relationship between law and religion. He is also a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of four books: Fall and Rise of the Islamic State; Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It; What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building; and, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy.

Jenna Weissman Joselit teaches American studies and modern Judaic studies at Princeton University where she specializes in the history of daily life in 19th and 20th century America and its relationship to religion and ethnicity. She is the author of The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950, which received the National Jewish Book Award in History, and A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America. She is a longtime columnist for the Forward newspaper as well as a frequent contributor to the New Republic and Gastronomica. Joselit is currently at work on a cultural history of the Ten Commandments in modern America.

Alan Wolfe is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. He is the author of numerous books, including Return to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What it Needs to Do to Recover It, The Transformation of American Religion: How We actually Live our Faith, An Intellectual in Public, and Does American Democracy Still Work? A contributing editor of The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, Commonwealth Magazine, and In Character, he also writes for Commonwealth, The New York Times, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, and other magazines and newspapers.