March 22: Two Events with Pitt Graduate Warren Hoffman

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
JEWISH STUDIES PROGRAM

PRESENTS: TWO EVENTS WITH WARREN HOFFMAN

TUESDAY MARCH 22, 2011



1-2:30 PM, A FACULTY-GRADUATE STUDENT SEMINAR
BEFORE STONEWALL: EARLY QUEER JEWISH TEXTS AND NARRATIVE DESIRE

2628 CATHEDRAL OF LEARNING

While Angels in America has in many ways come to represent the pinnacle of queer Jewish cultural production in America, what queer Jewish texts existed earlier in the 20th century? We'll look at passages from Abraham Cahan's 1917 The Rise of David Levinsky and Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969) and discuss the complexities of homoerotic narrative in these pre-Stonewall classics.

CO-SPONSORED BY WOMEN’S STUDIES, CULTURAL STUDIES, AND THE HUMANITIES CENTER.


7-9 PM, PUBLIC LECTURE
BLACKS AND JEWS ON STAGE AND SCREEN
BENEDUM HALL, ROOM G30
With their shared heritages of slavery, discrimination and Diaspora, blacks and Jews have trod similar, yet distinctive paths. This presentation explores the various ways in which this complex history has manifested itself in films, plays and music. We'll watch and discuss clips from The Jazz Singer (1927), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Liberty Heights (1999), and Fires in the Mirror (1993), and listen to music from Tin Pan Alley musicians like Irving Berlin. We'll look at these works to determine the contributions that African Americans and Jewish Americans have made to American popular culture at large, as well as to determine what this says about how blacks and Jews talk to and about each other.

CO-SPONSORED BY JFILM: THE PITTSBURGH JEWISH FILM FORUM AND THE PENNSYLVANIA HUMANITIES COUNCIL COMMONWEALTH SPEAKERS PROGRAM SUPPORTED IN PART BY THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES “WE THE PEOPLE” INITIATIVE.

Warren Hoffman is the Director of Arts and Cultural Programming at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Temple University. He is the author of The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture (Syracuse University Press, 2009). Hoffman holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from University of California-Santa Cruz and has written and lectured on a number of topics including Jewish literature, queer theory and American drama. Warren’s first play, New Words, was recently nominated for the Christopher Brian Wolk Playwriting Award. Warren earned his BA in English, Spanish, and Religious Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. For more information: Adam Shear, Jewish Studies Program, ashear@pitt.edu