LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Modern Jewish history scholar Paula Hyman will speak at the University of Louisville March 11 about female social activists, especially public health nurses, in the early 20th century.
Hyman will deliver the annual Naamani memorial lecture at 7:30 p.m. in Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium. The talk is free and open to the public.
The Yale University professor’s talk is titled “When Gendered Divisions Empowered Jewish Women: Social Activists and Public Health Nurses in Early 20th Century America and Palestine.” She is expected to discuss assumptions about gender roles and the social realities of the early 1900s.
Hyman, Yale’s Lucy Moses professor of modern Jewish history, teaches in both the history and religious studies departments. She formerly taught Jewish history for several years at Columbia University and was a dean at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Hyman also was a founding member in the early 1970s of the Jewish feminist organization Ezrat Nashim.
She co-edited the two-volume “Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia” and has written several books including “The Jews of Modern France” and “Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History.”
The College of Arts and Sciences sponsors the lecture series, which is named for former UofL political science professor Israel Naamani. The series brings to campus prominent scholars involved in Jewish, Middle East and Islamic studies.
For more information, contact Lee Shai Weissbach at 502-852-3755 or weissbach@louisville.edu