UCSIA/IJS-Chair 2011-2012: Theodor Dunkelgrün

During the academic year 2011-2012, Theodor Dunkelgrün of the University of Chicago will hold the chair. He will deliver two evening lectures for a general audience, as well as a few guest lectures within the faculty of arts at the University of Antwerp.

Public lecture I
Thursday 16th February 2012 at 20.00 PM / Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp
De rabbijn van Plantijn. Johannes Isaac Levita (1515-1577) in de Antwerpse Gouden Eeuw
Lecture in Dutch

Public lecture II
Tuesday 6th March 2012 at 20.00 PM / Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp
De bronnen van de Antwerpse Polyglotbijbel: joodse geleerdheid voor een katholieke koning
Theodor Dunkelgrün in dialogue with Dr. Piet van Boxel (Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies)
Lecture in Dutch.
Attendance is free of charge – registration required ijs@uantwerpen.be or T +32 3 265 52 43.

Guest lectures at the University of Antwerp on 29th February, 14th March, 19th March
29th February and 14th March: ‘Baruch Spinoza: the last of the Medievals’ and ‘Benedictus Spinoza: the first of the Moderns’ in the course Judaism and Philosophy (Prof. dr. Joachim Leilich); room R.013 - 14.00 until 16.00.
19th March: ‘Van Nieuwe Christenen naar Nieuwe Joden: Iberische Conversos in de Gouden Eeuwen van Antwerpen en Amsterdam’ in the course Introduction to Jewish Culture (Prof. dr. Karin Hofmeester); room R.005 - 16.00 until 18.00.
These guest lectures can be followed by anybody interested in the subjects. For more information and registration, please contact the Institute of Jewish Studies.

Theodor Dunkelgrün (Delft, 1976) was educated at the universities of Tel Aviv, Leiden, Chicago and Princeton. His work focuses on the early modern intellectual history and biblical scholarship, the history of the Hebrew book, and intellectual and scientific interaction and collaboration between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the early modern world. He spent a year in Antwerp, supported by the Belgian American Educational Foundation, for research into the Antwerp Polyglot Bible, and described the Hebrew manuscripts in the Plantin-Moretus Museum. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was the Martin Gruss Fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania. In fall 2011 he was the National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellow at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Saint Louis University. He is the author of 'The Hebrew Library of a Renaissance Humanist. Andreas Masius and the bibliography to his Iosuae Imperatoris Historia(1574) with a Latin edition and an annotated English translation’ in Studia Rosenthaliana 43 (2011).

Piet van Boxel is currently member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. From 2007 until 2011 he was Hebrew Curator at the Bodleian library of the University of Oxford and from 2001 until 2011 Fellow/Librarian at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. In 2000 and 2005 he was Fellow at the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Recent publications include ‘Robert Bellarmine Reads Rashi: Rabbinic Bible Commentaries and the Burning of the Talmud’ in The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy (Joseph R. Hacker and Adam Shear ed. Philadelphia, 2011) and ‘The Virgin and the Unicorn’ in Crossing Borders; Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting-place of Cultures (Piet W. van Boxel and Sabine Arndt ed. Oxford 2010). Forthcoming is Censorship and Conversion of the Jews under Pope Gregory XIII as Reflected in 7 mss. in the Biblioteca Vaticana.

Brochure UCSIA/IJS-Leerstoel 2011-2012 (PDF)